Great Books, Honors Programs, and Hidden Origins - The Virginia Plan and The University of Virginia in The Liberal Arts Movement (History of Education)

Great Books,
Honors Programs,
and Hidden Origins
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION
Edward R.Beauchamp, Series Editor
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY GENDER, RACE, AND THE

A History from the Ancient World to NATIONAL EDUCATION
Modern America ASSOCIATION
by Edward J.Power Professionalism and Its Permutations
by Wayne J.Urban
SCHOOL AND SOCIETY IN
VICTORIAN BRITAIN TRANSITIONS IN AMERICAN
Joseph Payne and the New World of EDUCATION
Education A Social History of Teaching
by Richard Aldrich by Donald H.Parkerson and
Jo Ann Parkerson
DISCIPLINE, MORAL REGULATION,
AND SCHOOLING WHEREVER I GO I WILL ALWAYS BE
A Social History A LOYAL AMERICAN
edited by Kate Rousmaniere, Kari Dehli, Schooling Seattle’s Japanese
and Ning de Coninck-Smith Americans during World War II
by Yoon K.Pak
JAPANESE AMERICANS AND
CULTURAL CONTINUITY CHARTERED SCHOOLS
Maintaining Language and Heritage Two Hundred Years of Independent
by Toyotomi Morimoto Academies in the United States,
1727–1925
RADICAL HEROES edited by Nancy Beadie
Gramsci, Freire, and the Politics of Adult and Kim Tolley
Education
by Diana Coben CHILDREN OF THE MILL
Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana,
WOMEN’S EDUCATION IN EARLY 1906–1960
MODERN EUROPE by Ronald D.Cohen
A History, 1500–1800
edited by Barbara J.Whitehead ANTI-SEMITISM AND SCHOOLING
UNDER THE THIRD REICH
ESSAYS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY by Gregory Paul Wegner
SOUTHERN EDUCATION
Exceptionalism and Its Limits THE SCIENCE EDUCATION OF
edited by Wayne J.Urban AMERICAN GIRLS
A Historical Perspective
GIRLS’ SCHOOLING DURING THE by Kim Tolley
PROGRESSIVE ERA
From Female Scholar to Domesticated GREAT BOOKS, HONORS
Citizen PROGRAMS, AND HIDDEN
by Karen Graves ORIGINS
The Virginia Plan and the University of
COMMON, DELINQUENT, AND Virginia in the Liberal Arts Movement
SPECIAL by William N.Haarlow
The Institutional Shape of Special
Education
by John Richardson
Great Books,
Honors Programs,
and Hidden Origins
The Virginia Plan and
the University of Virginia
in the Liberal Arts Movement
William N.Haarlow
ROUTLEDGEFALMER
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Published in 2003 by
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Copyright © 2003 by Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haarlow, William Noble.

Great books, honors programs, and hidden origins: the Virginia Plan and the University
of Virginia in the liberal arts movement/William Noble Haarlow.
p. cm.—(Studies in the history of education)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-93509-1
1. University of Virginia—Curricula—History. 2. Education,
Humanistic—Curricula—History. 3. Universities and colleges—Curricula—United
States—History. I. Title. II. Studies in the history of education (RoutledgeFalmer (Firm))
LD5672.H33 2003
378.755’481–dc21
2003046555
ISBN 0-203-46386-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-47171-7 (Adobe eReader format )

ISBN 0-415-93509-1 (Print Edition)
Series Preface
The RoutledgeFalmer Studies in the History of Education series includes not

only volumes on the history of American and Western education, but also on
the history of the development of education in non-Western societies. A major
goal of this series is to provide new interpretations of educational history that
are based on the best recent scholarship; each volume will provide an original
analysis and interpretation of the topic under consideration. A wide variety of
methodological approaches from the traditional to the innovative are used. In
addition, this series especially welcomes studies that focus not only on schools
but also on education as defined by Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn: “the
transmission of culture across generations.”
The major criteria for inclusion are (a) a manuscript of the highest quality
and (b) a topic of importance to understanding the field. The editor is open to
readers’ suggestions and looks forward to a long-term dialogue with them on
the future direction of the series.
Edward R.Beauchamp
v
Dedicated to my mother, Lynne R.Haarlow,
and the memory of my father, A.W.Haarlow III
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction Virginia, Columbia, Chicago, St.John’s, 1

and the Liberal Arts Movement
Chapter 1 Before the Virginia Plan 15
Chapter 2 The University of Virginia and the

Creation of the Virginia Plan 41
Chapter 3 The Virginia Plan and Its Reception at Virginia 69
Chapter 4 Developments at Virginia, Chicago, and St.John’s 101
Chapter 5 Great Plans, Modest Accomplishments 135
Chapter 6 The Virginia Plan at Virginia 171
Conclusion An Unfinished Story 197
Sources 203
Notes 205
Bibliography 243
Index 247
vii
Acknowledgments
The core of this book was originally my dissertation. Additional interviews,

archival research, and revisions have ameliorated the work, but my first debt is
to the faculty of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University
of Virginia. I am foremost grateful to my advisor, Jennings L.Wagoner, Jr.,
who provided unwavering encouragement, knowledge, and insight during my
graduate years and since. Dr.Wagoner has taught me much of what it means to
be an historian, and how to be an exemplary teacher, mentor, colleague, and
friend. Working with Dr.Wagoner has been, and continues to be, a privilege
and honor in the best Jeffersonian senses of these words. Drs.Annette Gibbs,
Jay Chronister, and Alton Taylor all provided support, encouragement, and
direction. Dean David Breneman generously gave his time and resources during
my time as his intern and later when he served on my doctoral committee. Sam
Kellams provided initial direction and insight on this study while Brian Pusser
rose to the occasion of a late committee appointment with voluminous editing
and undaunted energy. Peter Onuf, chairman emeritus of the History Department,
likewise served on my doctoral committee with patience, insight, and good
humor.
I am indebted to the individuals I was fortunate enough to interview in
Charlottesville, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C. Their recollections
and insight aided in piecing together this history and made it come alive. In
Charlottesville, Samuel A. (Pete) Anderson, II, architect for the University of
Virginia; Staige D.Blackford, editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review at the
University of Virginia; and George B. Thomas, professor of philosophy emeritus
at the University of Virginia, were all students of Stringfellow Barr at Virginia
in the early 1950s. Their recollections of Barr and his great books classes were
helpful in pulling together the specifics of that time. In particular, Thomas
provided invaluable insight into the Virginia Plan as he was one of a handful of
students to take both parts of the Virginia Plan curriculum. Thomas also later
served as the director of the Honors Program as a Virginia professor. Thomas’s
colleague, philosophy professor John Marshall, provided ample details on the
philosophy honors program, having served as its director for multiple years. I
was fortunate to be able to talk with the two official University of Virginia
Historians, both now emeritus: Charles E. (Chick) Moran and psychology
professor Raymond C.Bice. Moran offered insight into Barr from several
perspectives: first as Barr’s student at Virginia in the 1930s, later as a relative
of Barr’s by marriage, and finally as the first official University of Virginia
Historian. Bice followed Moran in the historian position. In addition to his
knowledge of Virginia history, Bice’s service in the late 1940s and early 1950s
ix
x • Acknowledgments
on the Lower Division Committee responsible for implementing the full Virginia
Plan proved very helpful. Classics professor emeritus Arthur F.Stocker offered
valuable insight into Virginia culture in the 1950s and the faculty perspectives
at that time. L.Harvey Poe, Jr. was a student of Scott Buchanan’s at Virginia in
the 1930s and a tutor at St.John’s College in the 1940s. His past acquaintance
with Barr and Buchanan and continuing interest in the great books and their
place at Virginia was most enlightening.
I received important help from scholars outside the University of Virginia.
Warden Alan Ryan of New College, Oxford University was helpful in providing
details of the English tutorial system both in the past and present. Sidney Hyman,
senior fellow at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago, provided lively
recollections of his experience as a student in Hutchins’ and Adler’s great
books honors course at the University of Chicago in the 1930s and the great
books movement over the course of the twentieth century. Professor Carol
Rigolot, Executive Director of the Princeton University Council of the
Humanities, read the dissertation and provided thoughtful insights. I wish also
to acknowledge with sincere gratitude the multiple meetings, telephone
conversations, and critical correspondence with Charles A.Nelson and Chauncey
G.Olinger, Jr. Nelson served as Barr’s intern at St.John’s in the mid–1940s. He
is Visitor Emeritus and former chairman of the Board of Visitors and Governors
of St.John’s College, and a biographer of Barr and Buchanan. Nelson provided
great insight and practical assistance in my work. His knowledge of and passion
for the great books is matched by Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr.’s knowledge of and
passion for the honors tutorial system at Virginia. As a student of Barr’s at
Virginia in the 1950s and a graduate of the Virginia honors program in
philosophy, Olinger has aided me with guidance, documentation, and an
appreciation for the promise of the Virginia Plan. Their help with my research
has been invaluable.
I am grateful to the archivists in Special Collections at Alderman Library at
the University of Virginia, in Special Collections at Regenstein Library at the
University of Chicago, and Special Collections at Greenfield Library at St.
John’s College. In particular I wish to acknowledge the assistance of Lisa
Richmond, Library Director, St.John’s College. Given the wealth of archival
material at St.John’s, her continuing assistance was greatly appreciated. Also,
R.J.Rockefeller at the Maryland State Archives and the archivists at the
Wisconsin State Archives made my time in Annapolis and Madison both
directed and productive. Travel for archival research and interviews was aided
by financial assistance from a Curry School of Education Dissertation Research
Award and a Gibbs Research and Publication Award.
My time at Mr. Jefferson’s University was greatly enriched by my fellow
doctoral students—especially Gene Crume, Chris Foley, Don Hasseltine, Sam
Miller, Steve Titus, and Ben Boggs. They provided comic relief, frank appraisal,
commentary and, most important, steadfast friendship. Earlier encouragement
Acknowledgments • xi
and insight came from professors Carol Rigolot, James Ward Smith, John
F.Wilson, and the Rev. Frederick H.Borsch at Princeton University. Thanks
also to the following professors at the University of Chicago: Philip Jackson,
John MacAloon, Martin Marty, and especially Barry Karl, who encouraged
me to follow an academic career.
Finally, I wish to thank my family, particularly my parents; they have always
been my first teachers. To my son Bill, I say thank you for reminding me of the
most important things in life. To my wife Laurel, I can say with true gratitude
that I hope you know how much your love and unending support mean to me
and to everything that I do.
Chicago, Illinois
April 2003
Introduction
Virginia, Columbia, Chicago, St. John’s, and the
Liberal Arts Movement
“The Virginia Plan deserves to be where people can inspect it.”
—Stringfellow Barr
Toward the end of the 1930s, with the Depression continuing at home and the
possibility of war threatening from abroad, Walter Lippmann saw a ray of hope
in the “Great Books” program that had recently been inaugurated at St. John’s
College in Annapolis, Maryland. Lippmann praised the return to the classics at
St. John’s as holding out promise that the principles that had guided the Founding
Fathers at the time of the nation’s birth might once again be revived. He was
encouraged that at St. John’s and a scattering of other institutions of higher
education a rebirth of traditional liberal learning was underway. During the
dark winter of 1938 Lippmann proclaimed in the pages of the New York Herald
Tribune that:
…in this country and abroad there are men who see that the onset of
barbarism must be met not only by programs of rearmament, but by
another revival of learning. It is the fact, moreover, that after tentative
beginnings in several of the American universities, Columbia, Virginia,
and Chicago, a revival is actually begun—is not merely desired, talked
about, and projected, but is in operation with teachers and students and a
carefully planned course of study…. I venture to believe that…in the
future men will point to St. John’s College and say that there was the
seed-bed of the American Renaissance.1
Of the institutions acknowledged by Lippmann, the twentieth-century role of
the University of Virginia in the revival of “traditional” liberal arts undergraduate
education is the least studied and the least well understood. In contrast,
Columbia, Chicago, and St. John’s have gained notoriety for their liberal
education programs. Indeed, as noted below, numerous writers and historians
have addressed the importance of these schools and their significance in the
liberal arts movement: a reform effort that, from the 1930s through the 1950s,
rejected the didactic lecture and the pervasive electivism in American collegiate
education. Instead the leaders of the liberal arts movement argued in favor of a
curricular philosophy that, to varying degrees at different institutions, promoted
a more prescribed curriculum based on the study of the great books of the western
1
2 • Great Books, Honors Programs, and Hidden Origins
canon and a pedagogy that emphasized honors seminar and tutorial work
conducted in a dialectical manner.2
Columbia University was the first institution of higher learning in the country
to offer a liberal arts great books course: John Erskine’s “General Honors”
course which began in 1920. Since the late 1930s Columbia has required its
undergraduates to take two great books courses: Literature Humanities and
Contemporary Civilization. These “Western civilization” surveys have been at
the center of Columbia’s well-known core curriculum for decades; indeed,
David Denby’s 1996 account of these courses in Great Books: My Adventures
with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western
World, was a national bestseller. The Literature Humanities course, which
debuted in the 1937–38 academic year, is “devoted to a standard selection of
European literary masterpieces.” Similarly, Contemporary Civilization, which
began in 1919 as a topical survey of the social sciences, evolved to offer “a
selection of philosophical and social-theory masterpieces.”3 In addition to
Denby’s popular account, the institutional history of Columbia’s core
curriculum has received scholarly attention from Justus Buchler, Daniel Bell,
Lionel Trilling, Gerald Graff, and Timothy Cross.4
Another leading institution, the University of Chicago, has held an imposing
position in American higher education since its founding in 1892. Chicago
calls itself “the teacher of teachers” and boasts the most Nobel Prize winners
of any school in the world. William Rainey Harper, Robert Maynard Hutchins,
the Manhattan Project, the undergraduate “common core” curriculum, the
“Chicago schools” of economics, jurisprudence, and sociology—all of these
have contributed to Chicago’s distinctive place in American higher education.
Modifications to the common core, instituted in the autumn of 1999, raised a
storm of controversy among some nationally known academicians who were
concerned that the core, with its emphasis on Western classics, would be watered
down. The controversy not only made professional publications, but also the
front page of the New York Times. In addition to this topical attention, numerous
scholarly and autobiographical accounts of Chicago’s role in liberal arts
education have been written by Michael Harris, Robert Hutchins, Mortimer
Adler, Harry Ashemore, Milton Mayer, William McNeill, Mary Ann Dzuback,
and others.5
Though less prestigious and far from mainstream, St. John’s College has
likewise distinguished itself in academia with its prescribed curriculum based
entirely on the liberal arts and the Western canon. Proudly distancing itself
from the dominant philosophies of higher education, St. John’s represents an
unconventional approach to higher education. First implemented in the 1937–
38 academic year (the same year as Columbia’s Literature Humanities course),
St. John’s “New Program” a four-year-all-required curriculum based on the
great books, continues today at the coliege’s campuses in Annapolis, Maryland
and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Harris Wofford, Charles Nelson, Richard Miller,
Introduction • 3
and J.Winfree Smith have all written about the creation and evolution of the
great books curriculum at St John’s.6
The influence of Columbia, Chicago, and St. John’s in the promotion of
“traditional” conceptions of liberal learning is well documented. These
institutions, or at least individuals associated with them, advanced a philosophy
of education that was centered on twentieth-century reconstructions of the
traditional liberal arts that had their origin in the thought of classical antiquity
and the Middle Ages. This philosophy of education was often manifest in the
promotion of the great books as the primary material, and seminar dialectical
discussion as the pedagogical means, thought most appropriate for collegiate
education.
But what about the role of the University of Virginia? There have been
revolutionary curricular innovations and reforms at Virginia since its founding
in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson. Yet the developments initiated at Virginia in the
1930s are especially significant, albeit under-appreciated, in terms of the
twentieth-century curricular history of American higher education. This book
argues that the University of Virginia and its 1935 “Virginia Plan” for curricular
reform are integral to the liberal arts movement that challenged and reshaped
American curricula in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s and which continues to inform
curricular debates today. Drawing on earlier efforts at Columbia and Chicago,
part of the Virginia Plan, described in Appendix A to the Plan, expanded the
Western canon and its influence first by making mathematical and scientific
classics integral to the study of great books and then, via Virginia professors
Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan, by taking this augmented philosophy
back to Chicago, St. John’s, and other institutions. By adopting the second part
of the Virginia Plan, explicated as Appendix B to the Plan, the University of
Virginia, under the leadership of professor Robert Gooch, also introduced honors
“Oxbridge”–style tutorial work to American public higher education. In short,
Virginia played a significant and formative role in the liberal arts movement.
In spite of these unique contributions, the University of Virginia’s
significance in the liberal arts movement is not widely understood today. For
example, in Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal
Education, historian Bruce Kimball asserted that in accounts of liberal
education, “the big names are always noted—Aydelotte, Meiklejohn, Hutchins;
Chicago, Columbia, Harvard…”7 Likewise, historians John Brubacher and
Willis Rudy in their book Higher Education in Transition: A History of
American Colleges and Universities, wrote that the great books curriculum
was “spawned at Columbia, encouraged at Chicago, and actually put into
operation at St. John’s College in Maryland.”8 As far as they go, these accounts
include necessary but also insufficient information, for absent from these
accounts are Barr, Buchanan, Gooch, and the University of Virginia. Yet
Virginia’s twentieth-century curricular reform history makes clear that more
attention should be paid to its place in that movement.
Contemporaneous accounts certainly suggest that such inclusion is

warranted. Indeed, Walter Lippmann was not the only national figure who had
no association with Virginia to acknowledge the role of the University of Virginia
in the promotion of liberal learning at that time. In 1944 Frank Aydelotte, the
director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and former president
of Swarthmore College, wrote that “honors plans are in operation in a number
of our stronger state institutions and…two at least, Virginia and Ohio, have
taken positions of leadership in the movement.” Aydelotte argued further that,
“If the faculty of the University of Virginia builds upon the foundations which
have been so well laid, the result will be an outstanding example of the
possibility of the adaptation of the honors idea to the conditions of a state
university.”9 Even newspaper articles of the time acknowledged Virginia’s role.
A 1946 article on the St. John’s great books curriculum noted the well-known
program was “organized on the basis of research and planning that was done
over a period of years at the University of Virginia and the University of
Chicago.”10
Like the broader historical accounts mentioned above, even more specialized
and relatively accurate accounts do not reflect the events or significance argued
by Aydelotte. For example, Charles Nelson’s edited compendium String-fellow
Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of His Life and Work, included The Virginia
Plan with Appendix A (the great books scheme), but not Appendix B (the
honors tutorial scheme). Yet together these components comprised the entire
Virginia Plan which was offered, as its authors argued, “as an integral whole.”11
St. John’s chronicler, J.Winfree Smith, acknowledged the honors scheme in
his history titled A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St.
John’s Program, but noted only that the great books scheme proposed in
Appendix A was not implemented in Charlottesville during the 1930s when
the Virginia Plan was produced. He failed to record that the honors scheme
proposed in Appendix B of the Plan was adopted with slight modification at
Virginia in 1937.12 Even the most accurate prior description of the entire Virginia
Plan, found in Amy Kass’ dissertation Radical Conservatives for Liberal
Education, included only one sentence on the fate of the two schemes at Virginia
in which she noted that the university decided “to accept the last two years of
the plan [Appendix B]—providing tutorial work for the better students—and
to shelve the general education plan [Appendix A] for the first two years.”13 In
light of Virginia’s adoption of the honors program in 1937 and Aydelotte’s
enthusiasm for it seven years later, the relative neglect of the honors tutorial
program by later chroniclers inappropriately minimizes its place in the Virginia
Plan and in the larger liberal arts movement.
In addition to assembling the full history and import of this curricular reform
effort, this study also argues that greater examination of the University of
Virginia is warranted because it is more typical of American higher education’s
interaction with the liberal arts movement than are the other formative
Introduction • 5
institutions: Columbia, Chicago, and St. John’s. Specifically, Virginia did not
completely reformulate its undergraduate curriculum as was done at St. John’s
and Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s. Nor did Virginia even go as far as setting
up core courses in Western civilization required of all undergraduates as was
done at Columbia. Rather, Virginia engaged in substantial conversations with
other institutions regarding undergraduate curricular reforms; undertook
extensive self-study as manifest by the numerous committees and reports created
to study liberal arts education at the university; and ultimately made curricular
changes in 1937 and 1951 for a relatively small number of “honors” students.
In summary, the University of Virginia, although unique because of its
leadership in both its expansion of the great books corpus and its introduction
of honors tutorial work in American public higher education, was nevertheless
far less radical, and hence more typical of universities across the nation, in
terms of the curricular innovations adopted during the height of the liberal arts
movement.
Finally, in addition to the arguments that the University of Virginia made
formative and unique contributions to the liberal arts movement—and was at
the same time more representative than other formative higher education
institutions engaged with that movement—the case will be made that the current
historical literature contains insufficient formulations to explain fully various
institutional reactions to the liberal arts movement, and thus its place in
curricular history. For example, in his classic work, The American College and
University, historian Frederick Rudolph dismissed the great books philosophy
attributed to Hutchins, Barr, and Buchanan by stating that “a return to ancient
Rome and Greece was not an idea that recommended itself to most educators
and observers.”14 Yet it is an oversimplification to suggest that the Virginia
Plan was adopted or not solely on the merits, or demerits, of its curricular
philosophy; Rudolph’s summation is only part of the story, faculty self-interest
also played a role. In his 1998 book As If Learning Mattered, Rutgers University
English professor Richard Miller, drawing on sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,
argued that:
…Bourdieu’s analysis points to the impossibility of radically reforming
any highly developed educational system, since that system will, of
necessity, be predominantly inhabited by individuals who have profited
from that system, who are invested in that system, and whose felt sense
of distinction has been established and certified by that system.15
Miller’s thesis is a useful addition to Rudolph’s, but Miller’s thesis is also
insufficient because of what it omits. Arguments that privilege self-interest
factors over philosophical considerations equally miss the point that the truth
is more complex than presented in either of these theories singularly or in
combination. Both philosophical and self-interest factors played significant and
demonstrable roles in the history of the Virginia Plan specifically and in
curricular reform generally. But they must be combined with a third group of
considerations, namely, institutional factors, before these historical events can
be fully understood.
The importance of institutional factors, such as the role of Depression-era
finances, is supported by archival evidence. For example, in a 1936 letter to
University of Virginia President John Newcomb, the members of the Committee
on Honors Courses who authored the Virginia Plan wrote:
After being advised by the president that he was unable, at the present
time, to finance such a plan for the more gifted first and second year
students as that outlined in [the great books plan] of this committee’s
former report, the Committee on Honors Courses desires to recommend
the consideration of the plan for third year and final honors set forth in
[the honors tutorial plan] of that report…. We confidently hope that some
means may be found in the near future to put this plan into execution.16
Institutional factors such as this have been largely ignored in the historical
literature on the liberal arts movement’s place in American higher education.
This study will address this historiographic omission, arguing that by themselves
the theories offered by Rudolph and Miller are important, but they are also
incomplete. Only when combined with institutional factors do these theories
account for all of the archival evidence. To privilege one type at the expense of
the others, as has been done in the previous literature, is to do a disservice to
the evidence and distort a legitimate interpretation of this curricular reform
movement.
Some Definitions
At this point some definitions of subjects and terms need to be provided. The
subject of this book—to a degree the liberal arts movement but essentially the
formative and heretofore underappreciated place of the Virginia Plan and the
University of Virginia within that movement—needs to be delimited for several
reasons. First, as noted earlier in this introduction, the roles and histories of
Virginia’s sister institutions in the movement have already been discussed.
Although relevant corrections and historical context will be provided throughout,
this study will not recount history already well documented in the existing
literature.
Second, terms such as the liberal arts, the liberal arts movement, general
education and liberal education, great books, and honors programs, have been
used varyingly over time. Historian Laurence Veysey, for example, argues that
in the twentieth century “the liberal arts curriculum” increasingly has been
redefined “away from the genteel tradition and toward identification with critical
intellect and creativity.”17 This sort of fluidity in the definitions of terms has
made certain aspects of American curricular history confusing and consequently
Introduction • 7
greater clarity is desirable. Below are brief definitions for some of the primary
concepts discussed in the book. These terms and their contexts will be discussed
more fully in the following chapters.
The Liberal Arts and the Liberal Arts Movement

In her 1973 doctoral dissertation titled Radical Conservatives for Liberal
Education, Amy Apfel Kass argued that the liberal arts movement was “an
attempt on the part of a few men to completely transform education by reviving
and reconstructing the traditional liberal arts.” These academicians thought of
themselves as “liberal artists.”18 Writing in 1943 Columbia professor and “liberal
artist” Mark Van Doren argued that the liberal arts “are specific arts, clearly
distinguished from other arts and performing necessary human functions.”19
What are they by name? Van Doren offered a classical definition:
Tradition, grounded in more than two millenniums of intellectual history,
calls them grammar, rhetoric, and logic; arithmetic, music, geometry, and
astronomy…. The liberal arts are seven, but a division occurs between
the first three, which Latin Europe called the trivium and the last four,
which it called the quadrivium.20
Mortimer Adler later wrote that the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic)
“taught the arts of reading and writing, of listening and speaking, and of sound
thinking.” The quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music [“not
audible music “wrote Adler, “but music conceived as a mathematical science”])
“taught the arts of observation, calculation, and measurement, how to apprehend
the quantitative aspect of things.”21
As will be seen, the liberal artists believed that collegiate education in
America had lost its way, but because of their rediscovery and reconstruction
of the traditional liberal arts, the liberal artists believed they had found a way
by which higher education might be saved, namely, by the study and practice
of the liberal arts. Kass elaborated that:
…Mortimer Adler, Scott Buchanan, and Richard McKeon provided the
original impetus and major insight behind the Liberal Arts Movement;
Robert Hutchins was its organizer and leader; Hutchins and Stringfellow
Barr were its principal spokesmen. Mark Van Doren and Alexander
Meiklejohn played important but less central roles.22
While the subject and importance of the liberal arts movement will be developed
later, one purpose here is to establish that, in the context of the liberal arts
movement, the “liberal arts” are the seven traditional liberal arts of the trivium
and quadrivium.
Also, this book concurs with Kass’ definition of the liberal arts movement
in terms of the individuals involved, and by extension, their era of activity in
the academy. Other aspects of her argument will be challenged in the following
chapters, but for the purposes of this study, the liberal arts movement, in concert
with Kass, is defined as the efforts of the above individuals, along with Virginia
professor Robert Gooch, to reform the American collegiate curriculum along
the lines of the traditional liberal arts. This movement lasted from the mid-
1930s, when the liberal artists first articulated their curricular ideas in
comprehensive ways, up through the mid-1950s, by which time the liberal
artists had desisted from their attempt to remake their respective institutions
and higher education in general. This cessation of direct institutional activity
by the original group of liberal artists is important, for although direct
manifestations of the movement continued to exist after the 1950s, and to
varying degrees still exist at Columbia, Chicago, St. John’s, and Virginia, it
marks the end of the liberal arts movement. By definition then, the liberal arts
movement should not be understood as encompassing any and all attempts
since World War I, successful or not, to implement great books courses of
study, or honors programs, or core courses in Western civilization, not to
mention the many general and liberal education reforms that have occurred in
American higher education throughout the twentieth century. Some of these
attempts, such as Columbia’s War Issues Course, and Alexander Meiklejohn’s
Experimental College at Wisconsin-Madison, transpired before the liberal arts
movement came into its own, and others followed it. But these various attempts
were made by other individuals at other times for reasons both similar and
dissimilar from those argued by Hutchins, Barr, Buchanan, and the other “liberal
artists” between 1934 and 1954. Some of these other efforts either precipitated
the liberal arts movement, are related to it, such as the Program of Liberal
Studies at the University of Notre Dame, or are descended from it, but they are
not, strictly speaking, part of the movement.23 The philosophy and parameters
of the liberal arts movement are elucidated by looking more closely at other
terms, starting with general and liberal education.
General and Liberal Education

In their 1981 Carnegie Foundation essay, A Quest for Common Learning, Ernest
Boyer and Arthur Levine wrote that the purpose and proprietorship of the
academic major and electives are easily asserted; however, “though general
education can be defined as the breadth component of a college education, any
agreement beyond that quickly fades.” As evidence they argue:
A.S.Packard, the Bowdoin College professor who popularized the term,
viewed [general education] as a prerequisite for specialized study.
Alexander Meiklejohn, father of the “survey course” and creator of the
University of Wisconsin’s acclaimed experimental college, considered
general education to be precisely the opposite: an antidote to
specialization! John Dewey thought of general education as “an integrative
experience underlying the unity of knowledge.” But A.Lawrence Lowell,
Introduction • 9
the Harvard president who promoted distribution requirements, described

it as the sum total of “a number of general courses in wholly unrelated
areas.” In 1947, the Presidential Commission on Higher Education defined
general education as education for public participation. Yet John Stuart
Mill, years before, claimed it to be education for a satisfying private life.
The famed Harvard Report of 1945, General Education in a Free Society,
called it plainly and simply “liberal education.” But Daniel Bell, in his
book on general education, said just as positively that liberal education
and general education are by no means synonymous.24
Boyer and Levine’s examples demonstrate the general confusion about general
and liberal education and their differences, assuming there are any in the first
place. Those who have seen the two as synonymous avoid making distinctions.
However, those who believe there is a difference between general and liberal
education must distinguish them from each other. In 1966 Columbia professor
Daniel Bell argued that general education had three broad aims: “to provide a
common learning; to give the student a comprehensive understanding of the
Western tradition; [and] to combat intellectual fragmentation with
interdisciplinary courses.”25 On the other hand, Bell argued that liberal education
could be defined through six purposes: “To overcome intellectual provincialism;
to appreciate the centrality of method; to gain an awareness of history; to show
how ideas relate to social structures; to understand the way values infuse all
inquiry; [and] to demonstrate the civilizing role of the humanities.”26
Bell belonged to a group noted by historian Christopher Lucas, who
argued that:
Interestingly, in the 1940s and 1950s, some writers attempted to introduce
a sharp distinction between “liberal” and “general” education, the
suggestion being that the former consisted of a fixed body of traditional
liberal-arts disciplines, and the latter any course of study exhibiting breadth
or diversity. This usage was decidedly at odds with earlier practice in the
1920s and 1930s, when the two terms were used interchangeably and
almost synonymously. As always, writers harbored great expectations
about what liberal-general education might accomplish, but were forever
in disagreement over structure and substance.27
Others did not make such distinctions. Historians John Brubacher and Willis
Rudy argued that, while there was a “close similarity” between general and
liberal education, general education “was not so much a synonym for liberal
education as it was a way of organizing it.” They also offered that, as “a facet”
of liberal education, general education developed two characteristics: “On the
one side it faced the great proliferation of subjects and tried to determine what
everyone ought to know, regardless of departmental organization. On the other
it tried to interrelate subjects into some meaningful whole.”28 With their emphasis
on essential knowledge and skills and their belief in the unity of knowledge,
the liberal artists who formulated the liberal arts movement would certainly
agree with the necessity of these two characteristics, but they did not argue for
“general education,” but rather for “liberal education.”
These contentions notwithstanding, in the literature on higher education,
general education reform or revival usually refers to a “traditional” model of
general education, that is, an effort to combat “those academic bugaboos
vocationalism, over-specialization, and the elective curriculum.”29 Although
other curricular models, such as the progressive and the technocratic, also found
expression in general education, historically general education, as described
by Boyer and Levine, Bell, Brubacher, Rudy, and others, is a “traditionalist”
or “restorationist” endeavor aimed at promoting liberal education.
The general/liberal dilemma will not be resolved here. Instead, for clarity
and except where otherwise noted, “general education” and “liberal education,”
in concert with the literature, are understood in this study in the traditional
senses noted above. At the same time, it is acknowledged that these terms are
interwoven, used differently by different writers, and have changed meaning
over time. As noted earlier, this book argues that the liberal arts movement was
a distinct curricular reform movement. It makes no such claims of relative
precision for “liberal” or “general” education.
General/Liberal Education and the Liberal Arts Movement

While the distinctions between general and liberal education are obviously
contested, the relation of the three general education movements (referred to as
revivals by Boyer and Levine) to the liberal arts movement is instructive for
understanding both the influence and limits of the liberal arts movement. As
will be seen in Chapter 1, the events at Columbia following World War I
precipitated both the first general education movement and the liberal arts
movement. Yet by the mid-1930s, when the liberal arts movement was coming
into its own, particularly with the drafting of the Virginia Plan at Charlottesville
(part of which served as the model for St. John’s), the first general education
movement had fallen victim to the vocational necessities of the Depression era.
Boyer and Levine noted, for example, that”…the ‘Great Books’ curriculum at
St. John’s in Maryland [was] produced [in 1937] when interest in general
education was on the decline at many institutions.”30
World War II precipitated a general education revival, and a further blurring
of terms. Kimball noted:
One other argument continuing after World War II [was] the
recommending of general education. As these recommendations gained
strength after the war, there emerged more and more clearly a standard
plan of undergraduate studies resembling that of Columbia University:
general education in the three areas of humanities, social sciences, and
Introduction • 11
natural sciences in the first two years, and a major or concentration in the
last two years. The college of the University of Chicago was also influential
through its brief abstention from prescribing a major, a reluctance based
on “the notion that a liberal education should constitute a single whole.”
Nor was Columbia insensitive to this outlook, viewing its Contemporary
Civilization and Humanities course as the unifying aspect of its
undergraduate program. By 1960, a selective nationwide study found only
St. John’s College in Annapolis rejecting the distribution and concentration
format.31
Clearly, Kimball is conflating general and liberal education since he uses
“general education” to describe the Columbia program, includes “liberal
education” to describe Chicago’s program, and concludes that St. John’s
remained distinct from the dominant academic model.
While the second general education movement that followed World War II
was eventually supplanted by the technocratic concerns raised by Sputnik, the
curricular manifestations of the liberal arts movement, which had faded as a
generative force in the curriculum by the mid-1950s, generally were maintained
until the Vietnam Era. Indeed, even though Columbia, Chicago, and St. John’s
all retain the spirit, if not always the courses themselves, that resulted from the
movement, it took the curricular upheavals of the late 1960s and early 1970s
to direct the focus of higher education away from the great books, honors
programs, and “western civ” promoted by the liberal arts movement. The periods
of general education reform postulated by Boyer and Levine, by contrast, were
from 1918–1930, 1943–1955, and 1971–1981 (the last of which was a reaction
to the Vietnam era upheavals). While the liberal arts movement and the general
education movements share some common features, it is clear that these are
not one in the same. Rather they are better understood as roughly parallel
movements that shared a common ancestry, that waxed and waned, and in the
case of general education, cycled in and out of influence.
The Great Books

The “great books” philosophy of education will be developed more fully later
in this study as it was integral to the liberal arts movement. For the current
purpose, the following defining ideas of the philosophy are briefly noted. Lists
of great books have existed since classical antiquity. The Roman orator and
educator, Quintilian, assembled a list of orators and historians “whose books
should be studied.”32 But as embodied as a distinct means to liberal education,
the great books philosophy was first manifest in John Erskine’s 1920 General
Honors course at Columbia.33 Fully elaborated, however, to include not only
literary and humanistic but also mathematical and scientific works, this
philosophy was first manifest in the 1935 Virginia Plan which eventually reached
its greatest expression in the great books curriculum of St. John’s College.
Essentially the great books philosophy, argued most succinctly by Robert

Hutchins in his 1954 book, Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education,
contends that: “The West needs to recapture and reemphasize and bring to bear
upon its present problems the wisdom that lies in the words of its greatest thinkers
and in the discussion that they have carried on.” When one engages in this
“Great Conversation,” the liberal artists contended, one will see that: “These
books shed some light on all our basic problems…. These books show the origins
of many of our most serious difficulties. The spirit they represent and the habit
of mind they teach are more necessary today than ever before.”34 Hutchins argued
these qualities are found in classic works:
Great books are great because of their excellence of construction and
composition, immediate intelligibility on the aesthetic level, increasing
intelligibility with deeper reading and analysis, leading to maximum depth
and maximum range of significance with more than one level of meaning
and truth.35
In other words, said Hutchins, “a classic is a book that is contemporary in every
age” and hence essential to education in every age.36
Honors Programs
Like great books, honors tutorial work was central to the Virginia Plan. As will
be discussed later, honors programs have taken different forms since their
introduction at Swarthmore College in the 1920s. At some institutions honors
programs have consisted of a set of prescribed courses; in other cases they have
been completely elective in their requirements. What they all have in common
is an elite notion that the brightest students will benefit from a curricular program
different from that available to the average college student. The honors program
embodied in the Virginia Plan, not coincidentally proposed by three Rhodes
Scholars (Barr, Buchanan, and Gooch), was based on the English tutorial method
of instruction found at Oxford and Cambridge.37
Honors programs and great books programs and courses existed before the
Virginia Plan and continue to exist. Although ones implemented since the Virginia
Plan have the Plan as part of their provenance, great books courses today, save
at St. John’s and to a degree at Chicago, are not descended directly from the
Plan, although they are arguably informed by the Plan and its philosophy. For
example, Allan Bloom’s 1988 call in The Closing of the American Mind for a
return to the great books model of collegiate education is indebted to the liberal
arts movement, but also removed from it by virtue of being promoted at a different
time by a different historical actor for both old and new reasons. Similarly,
while the honors program implemented at Virginia in 1937 still exists in two
departments at Virginia, it remains unusual with its traditional emphasis (not
always followed by participating departments) on one-on-one tutoring. As will
Introduction • 13
be discussed later, most other honors programs have often rejected one-on-one
tutoring for financial and sometimes pedagogical reasons.
Synopsis
In summary, although the liberal arts movement was related to the general
education movements it was also different from them, even though the
movements shared many ideas and goals in common. Likewise, the liberal arts
movement was not synonymous with great books courses nor the honors
program movement, although its different manifestations at Columbia, Chicago,
St. John’s, and Virginia always incorporated one or both of these related elements
at their core. Last, because of their changing definition over time, the liberal
arts movement is not synonymous with “the liberal arts” or “liberal education.”
Instead this book treats the liberal arts movement as a distinct event in twentieth-
century American curricular history that had a beginning and an end. It was
formulated and led by Mortimer Adler, Stringfellow Barr, Scott Buchanan,
Robert Gooch, Robert Hutchins, Mark Van Doren and, to a lesser extent, by
Alexander Meiklejohn, and Richard McKeon. The liberal arts movement had
precedents in the first general education movement after World War I; it came
into its own in the 1930s, especially at Virginia, Columbia, Chicago, and St.
John’s; ebbed and flowed during the 1940s and 50s; and ultimately succumbed
to the politics of Sputnik and the Vietnam era.
The following chapters present a history of the Virginia Plan: its origins,
manifestations, and legacy, all found at the University of Virginia and elsewhere,
and in the larger story of American twentieth-century curricular history. In
addressing a neglected yet clearly formative and thus important topic in the
history of the collegiate curriculum in the twentieth century, this study
ameliorates the historical literature on the liberal arts movement and sheds
light on the alchemy of how and why academic innovation succeeds or fails.
These considerations raise this study from being local to universal. Ultimately
then, this book endeavors to more fully interpret the past and also inform
contemporary understandings of problems inherent in curriculum formulation
and implementation.
In an interview late in his life, nationally-known educator Stringfellow Barr
asserted that: “The Virginia Plan deserves to be where people can inspect it.”38
This book endeavors to promote greater familiarity with an important
development in American higher education in the twentieth century. To
paraphrase Robert Maynard Hutchins, educators at America’s colleges and
universities should know what they are teaching and why. As an “integral
whole,” the Virginia Plan was a significant and enduring answer to that charge.
CHAPTER 1
Before the Virginia Plan
“It is impossible to think clearly about the curriculum of the American college
or university without some sense of its past.”
—Clark Kerr
At the opposite end of the Lawn from the Rotunda at the University of Virginia
stands Old Cabell Hall. Completed in 1898 under the auspices of the eminent
architect Stanford White, Cabell Hall closed off the open end of Thomas Jefferson’s
Academical Village and, in doing so, not only eliminated the prospect of the hills
south of Charlottesville but also flipped the intended entry to the university from
the south end to the north end of the Lawn. More than Jefferson’s physical design,
however, had been dramatically altered at the university by the close of the
nineteenth century. Virginia’s curriculum and the philosophy behind it had changed
substantially during the 1800s. To understand these changes and how they
precipitated the 1935 Virginia Plan, one must first place the University of Virginia
in the larger context of American higher education history.
This chapter briefly discusses the evolution of certain aspects of American
higher education from the founding of Harvard College in 1636 up to the 1935
Virginia Plan. Although primary emphasis is placed on curricular developments
and philosophies during this three-hundred-year period, attention is also given
to the place of the student in American colleges and universities, as the two are
closely related topics. Indeed, both the curriculum and what is today referred
to as “student life” were central to the philosophy of undergraduate education
articulated in the Virginia Plan. While this chapter highlights significant
historical points, influences, ideas, actors, and developments of this evolution,
it is not intended to be exhaustive. Instead, it initially presents background for,
and themes central to, the history of higher education relevant to the creation
of the Virginia Plan.
The focus of the historical overview then shifts to the pre-Virginia Plan
manifestations of the general education and liberal arts movements at Columbia
University and the University of Chicago. Because accounts of the origins of
general education at Columbia and Chicago have been told elsewhere by
numerous capable historians, these overviews are relatively brief, intending
not to be comprehensive institutional histories, but rather to provide a context
in which to place the Virginia Plan.
15
The Curriculum and the Student in American Higher Education

The evolution of curriculum and college student development in American
higher education is a long and telling story. Long because although the American
history of curriculum and student development ostensibly starts with the
founding of Harvard in 1636, its foundations are linked directly to the medieval
university of the European High Middle Ages and stretch even further back to
classical antiquity through what historian Bruce Kimball calls the oratorical
and philosophical traditions of liberal education.1 The evolution of curriculum
and student development in America is likewise telling because the forms they
have taken over time in terms of their manifestations, pedagogical and theoretical
assumptions, content, structure, and requirements say a great deal about the
contemporaneous society. Understanding this history is essential if one is to
grasp the significance of the Virginia Plan and the liberal arts movement.
There are four related and essential themes fundamental to any understanding
of the college curriculum and student in America that are particularly germane
to the Virginia Plan. First, since the beginning of its history in the seventeenth
century, there has been a recurring fear of declension in American higher
education. As a result, this concern has played a continuing role in approaches
to the curriculum and the student. Second, there has been an ongoing debate
about what constitutes a good college education, that is, what are its proper
goals. Third, there has been a related battle between election and prescription,
or more broadly, between freedom and restriction in the curriculum. Fourth,
there has been an ongoing argument about whether higher education should
groom a leadership elite, or emphasize the democratizing effects of mass
education. As will be seen in the following historical overview, these four themes
are fundamental to any understanding of the evolution of the curriculum and
the student in American institutions of higher education in general, and to the
formulation and implementation of the Virginia Plan in specific.
The Colonial College

Nine young men made up the first cohort of graduates in America, the Harvard
Class of 1642.2 These first American bachelors of arts were inheritors of the
“Oxbridge” academic tradition of England, yet they were also products of very
colonial American concerns. Of course they did not think of themselves as
“Americans,” but as Englishmen. Nevertheless, the colonists of Massachusetts
Bay believed with great urgency that education was essential to the survival of
their community in a way perhaps not envisioned in Europe, for in America the
future of civilization was not to be taken for granted. The barbarism of the
wilderness was literally all around them, and it threatened to overwhelm their
holy compact at any time. Education was thus deemed essential to the very
survival of the Puritan endeavor. Literate ministers were necessary not just
because of the Protestant emphasis on reading the Word, but also because the
Before the Virginia Plan • 17
small colony was responsible for providing its own Puritan clergy. Civilization
was literally only one generation deep, so the younger generation had to be
prepared to persevere and prosper. As conceived by the colonists, self-reliance
was required, but only possible with higher education.
The Puritan concern about declension is a perennial concern in the story of
the curriculum in America and the American student, a concern which has
both indicted and motivated higher education and which continues literally up
through the present day. The lurking danger has taken different forms over
time: the Old Deluder, the wilderness, threatened English liberties, an
uneducated republican citizenry, irrelevance, vocationalism, the elective
system—the list goes on, up through contemporary concerns about declining
morality, political correctness, and scholastic standards.
The early curriculum of the colonial colleges was thoroughly classical and
prescribed. Emphasis was on the three Aristotelian philosophies: natural, moral,
and mental (that is, physics, ethics, and metaphysics), ancient languages (Greek,
Latin, and Hebrew), and especially divinity. These subjects were largely taught
via the seven liberal arts as codified in the early Middle Ages: the trivium
(logic, grammar, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry,
astronomy, and music).3 In sum the colonial curriculum was part medieval
with its scholastic concerns, part Renaissance with its interest in producing a
governing class and gentlemanly refined culture, and part Reformation with
its dedication to Protestant Christianity.4
Over the course of the eighteenth century, the original classical course of
study was enlarged to include Enlightenment thought and subjects, including
“more mathematics, greater specialization in the natural sciences, the study of
literature and history, and a more prominent role for moral philosophy.”5 Moral
philosophy, which developed as the capstone course for collegiate education,
was broadly a course in ethics that “was wonderfully reassuring in its insistence
on the unity of knowledge and the benevolence of God.”6 Although the colonial
college curriculum was expanded, the trend could not continue unchecked.
The introduction of belles lettres, modern languages, history, and especially
the sciences increasingly crowded the classical curriculum so that by the early
nineteenth century important choices had to be made. The antebellum college
would be forced to deal with this inevitable eventuality.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was believed that the
classical course of study promoted morality and character because of its difficult
content and the academic rigor required to master it. Although colonial educators
believed that academic knowledge was important for students, their primary
concern was the development of character and piety, whether they were training
ministers or secular leaders. Accordingly, colonial schools invoked a strict
discipline for students.
The schools also served in loco parentis, that is, as parental surrogates for
students. With both their severe theology and their acute consciousness that
the place of their civilization in the new world was tenuous, it is not surprising
that a form of in loco parentis would be employed by colonial colleges,
especially considering the relative youth of the college students in those years.
Starting from the beginning of American higher education, reaching an apogee
in the Antebellum era and then slowly declining, in loco parentis arguably
existed up through the 1960s. The nature of that relationship changed over this
long span of time, but the essential assumption that schools should in some
form proscriptively direct student development—via rules or appeals to
conscience, and manifested in characteristics such as compulsory chapel—
was the modus operandi for most of the history of American higher education.
The second essential theme noted in the beginning of this chapter, the debate
over the aims of higher education—between liberal/general education and
practical/vocational education—came into sharper focus starting in the mid-
nineteenth century, but can be linked to the ancient debates between the Sophists
and Socrates in Greece during the fifth century B.C.Frederick Rudolph argues:
An exclusively cultural or nonutilitarian education is a concept contrary
to experience. As Christopher Jenks and David Riesman put it, “The
question has always been how an institution mixed the academic with the
vocational, not whether it did so.” And the question has also been how
much value society attached to the academic, the cultural, and supposedly
nonutilitarian.7
The colonial college placed itself above this liberal/practical distinction. Trades
would be mastered through apprenticeship, outside of formal higher education,
while “classical erudition was believed to afford the sure guide for those destined
to conduct the affairs of state and church.” Moreover, “Shared in common by
all academicians, whatever their sectarian persuasion, was the presumption that
classical learning was essential for success in the various learned professions
of law, medicine, or theology.”8 These views would find a renewed voice in the
twentieth-century liberal arts movement.
The Antebellum College

The antebellum college curriculum maintained a focus on the classical course
of study, but, continuing the practice started in the eighteenth century, it also
increasingly supplemented the traditional course with modern languages,
mathematics, and more science. To cover these subjects, “parallel” or “partial”
courses of study that often led to a B.S. degree were also introduced. These
alternatives to the classical B.A. program gave students a choice between a
classical and an arguably more practical course of study.9 In spite of these
curricular additions, antebellum higher education curriculum is usually
exemplified by the famous Yale Report of 1828 which claimed: “The two
great points to be gained in intellectual culture, are the discipline and the
furniture of the mind; expanding its powers, and storing it with knowledge.
The former of these is, perhaps, the more important of the two.”10 As for the
arguments that collegiate education should have greater orientation toward
the practical concerns of the business and professional realms, the Report
responded that, “our object is not to teach that which is peculiar to any one of
the professions; but to lay the foundation which is common to them all.”11 In
short, the mission of the liberal arts college was “to serve as a custodian of
high culture; to nurture and preserve the legacy of the past; to foster a paideia,
or ‘common learning,’ capable of enlarging and enriching people’s lives; and
to impart the knowledge, skills, and sensibilities foundational to the arts of
living themselves.”12
Although the Yale Report is often portrayed as a deeply conservative
document, arresting the progress of higher education in America for decades,
more recently this view has been challenged. Recent interpretation has
suggested that the Yale Report was actually innovative in an important way.
Instead of trying to cover the entirety of knowledge in a universal curriculum,
as additions to the curriculum in the eighteenth century were designed to do,
the Yale Report, acknowledging that such coverage was no longer possible,
held that “the purpose of a college education was to train all the faculties of the
human mind, rather than to teach all branches of knowledge.” In short, emphasis
was being shifted from the furniture to the discipline of the mind.13
Whether or not the Yale Report represents innovation, there is little question
that collegiate education too often remained a grim affair as an example from
Princeton in 1846 demonstrates.
When word reached [Princeton Vice President John] Maclean that
Professor [Evert M.] Topping was teaching Greek literature rather than
the Greek language, he at once called him to account. Topping replied
that he used literature as a means to an end, in order to interest the students
in their work. After years of futile attempt in the familiar method of
teaching, in which he was often interrupted “by groans and other wilful
(sic) noises,” he began to intersperse the translation and parsing with
such comments on the passages as had attracted his own attention. The
effect was immediate. From being notoriously unruly and apathetic, the
students became docile and studious. “We must succeed, it seems to me,
by interesting the understanding of the students,” he concluded, “by
rousing a manly interest of thought and then turning them back upon
themselves.” That this was rank heresy we conclude from the fact that a
few days later Topping’s resignation was accepted by the trustees.14
Cognizant of the content and pedagogy commonly employed in American
colleges, Franklin, Jefferson, Jacksonians, and others criticized the classical
curriculum to varying degrees as being insufficient if not irrelevant to the needs
of the young Republic. Their criticisms notwithstanding, the spirit and content
of the Yale Report largely encapsulates the stance taken by the colleges up
through the Civil War.
It would be incorrect to assume, however, that there were no modifications
to the classical curriculum during the Antebellum era. During the first decades
of the 1800s, students, as they had always done, used ancient passages to study
the classical languages. Generally they did not read classical texts in full. Instead,
textbooks such as the Graeca Majora were used to study the learned classical
languages. These textbooks were compilations of extracts, not classical works
in their entirety. In short, “it was not classical literature, poetry, drama,
archaeology, antiquities, biography, or history that occupied college boys in
the classical classroom, but language.”15 This had been true since the founding
of Harvard in 1636 and at its predecessors, Oxford and Cambridge. However,
during the humanist revolution that occurred roughly between 1820 and 1860,
a new philosophy of education emerged, one which sought to promote a virtuous
citizenry, not just classical erudition. It was believed that the study of the
classical world as a whole, and not just classical grammar and language, would
help preserve the young American Republic from declension. Coinciding with
the Greek Revival that developed after 1820, the college curriculum saw “the
tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus; the comedies of Aristophanes;
the orations of Demosthenes; the Illiad and Odyssey of Homer; and the dialogues
of Plato all appear with increasing frequency after 1830 next to Cicero, Horace,
Livy, and Tacitus.”16
This is an important point, for when the liberal artists of the twentieth century
argued that their philosophy of education, based in part on the great books,
was a re-introduction of what had always been the basis of Western education,
they were only partly correct. True, classical texts were used before the rise of
the research university in the latter half of the nineteenth century, but it would
be incorrect to assume that American college students had generally followed
something akin to a great books course of study. The liberal artists were on
firmer ground when they sought precedence for their philosophy of education
in the Antebellum era, rather than the Republican era of the late eighteenth
century, or earlier.
Women’s Education and Curricular Innovation

Female higher education in the Antebellum era was similar in numerous respects
to male education at the time, but it also introduced for the first time some of
the subjects that would later be found in most colleges and universities. Women’s
colleges taught Latin and sometimes Greek; foreign languages, with an emphasis
on French; mathematics; and science, which demonstrated God’s designs. They
also pioneered the study of the fine arts, particularly music and art, which along
with embroidery, dance, and conversation, made up the “ornamental” subjects
in the curriculum. Like the male antebellum colleges, female colleges gradually
introduced parallel courses of study; young ladies chose between a classical

course and an English course. Yet the notion of “separate spheres,” of different
societal roles for men and women, meant that questions of vocational training
for women did not emerge, especially in the South. Higher education for
antebellum Southern women was a mark of gentility and status. Although higher
education also served this role in male education, vocational considerations
were not a concern when it came to educating Southern women because
antebellum ladies invariably took up their prescribed domestic roles in the home,
whether they enjoyed the benefits of higher education or not.17
Antebellum Student Life

In loco parentis continued as the dominant paradigm, as student development
and student life for men and women in the antebellum college was strictly
regimented. Compulsory chapel, common dining, classes, and scheduled study
hours were designed not only to build character and impart knowledge, but
also to reduce mischief and other bad behavior bred by idle time. However, the
result was a continuance of disciplinary problems, student riots, and general
resentment on the part of students. Because American faculty members remained
in charge of student discipline, they were sometimes unable to develop
mentoring relationships with the students. This fact was different from the
experience of students at Oxford and Cambridge where, starting in the eighteenth
century, disciplinary responsibility increasingly fell to deans, proctors, and
beadles. As a result, the Oxbridge dons were freed from these responsibilities
and “the English colleges found it easy to liberalize their instructional procedures
by developing the individual tutorial system.”18 This system eventually became
a model for educators who sought a reformation of American higher education
in the twentieth century.
Rise of the University

In the years following the Civil War, the old college curriculum was sharply
challenged by the rise of the land-grant institutions, the German research model
university, and the introduction of the elective curriculum, which historian
Frederick Rudolph calls “one of the most creative, and also one of the most
destructive developments of the post-Civil War years.”19 The practical and
service-oriented nature of higher education associated with the landgrant
institutions was made financially possible by the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890.
The pure and applied research and professional emphases of the newly founded
and expanded universities, inspired by German higher education ideals and
fueled by philanthropic largess as well as increased public funding, likewise
greatly broadened the curriculum. Both the land-grant institutions and the newly
emerging research universities were made socially acceptable by a society
increasingly impressed by claims made for practicality, service, and research
in higher education. These changes eventually broadened the appeal of higher

education in an American society that, throughout much of the nineteenth
century, had not considered higher education to be of practical value. The later
1800s are thus particularly important to the third theme put forth in the
introduction to this chapter: prescription versus election.
Although the elective system had first appeared at Jefferson’s University of
Virginia in the 1820s—a fact that would play a role in debates concerning the
Virginia Plan—the practice there was a half-century ahead of its time. It was
not until the 1870s, under the leadership of Harvard president Charles W. Eliot,
that election began to gain widespread acceptance, even though calls for it had
been made by various reformers for decades. In 1872 Eliot wrote: “With regard
to the college proper, the one thing we are doing at Cambridge is the introduction
of a true University freedom of studies under the name of the ‘elective
system.’…I believe that Harvard is doing a great service to American education
by leading the way in this reform. All other issues are comparatively
unimportant.”20 Rudolph wrote: “The rationale that Eliot offered for the elective
system rested on a combination of desire, necessity, principle, and preference.”
Preference and desire were found in Eliot’s belief that: “A young man could
learn to discipline himself…only if he were released from external controls
and only if he were interested enough in some goal to see the worth of self-
discipline.”21 As for necessity, election “gave vitality to the American college
at a time when its remoteness from society threatened the whole structure of
American higher education with disaster.” And finally, as for principle,
“Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln had already expressed on the level of
democratic belief what Eliot was now saying should be an operative principle
in higher education.”22 Eliot was not alone responsible for the adoption of the
elective system, but he was the most influential spokesman for it.
Once election did arrive, it spread quickly, becoming the dominant curricular
paradigm by the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of the subjects in
the old classical curriculum remained, but the widespread prescription and
discipline codified in the Yale Report did not survive. It will be recalled that
the Yale Report shifted the primary emphasis of a collegiate education from
the furniture—the content—of the curriculum to the discipline—the mental
training—of the mind. While the authors of the Report believed that the classical
subjects were superior in their ability to encourage mental discipline, by the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, with the disciplinary argument in decline,
the Yale Report’s argument was used, ironically, to reject the prescribed
curriculum. Regardless of whether or not classical subjects promoted mental
discipline, as the mental discipline argument was increasingly rejected as
antiquated, so was the inherent primacy of the classical curriculum.
In spite of the decline of the disciplinary argument, initially many educators
believed the changes at Harvard were preposterous and that they would destroy
American higher education. The specter of declension had appeared once more.
James McCosh, the president of Princeton, was one of the most prominent
academics to raise his voice against electivism. He and others argued that
electivism assumed a maturity on the part of students which they did not possess,
that students would avoid essential subjects not to their liking and, and in the
process, that students would lose the unity of knowledge that the college had
always sought to provide.23 As will be seen, these various arguments against
electivism later found voice in the proponents of “liberal culture,” general
education, and in the arguments of the liberal artists who fostered the liberal
arts movement.
The detractors notwithstanding, arguments ranging from student interest,
motivation, and even rights, to practicality and applicability all enabled the
elective system to take hold. The transformation of the curriculum was a
fundamental one. In The Emergence of the American University, Laurence
Veysey writes that:
When the disciplinary outlook finally died, its passing reflected an important
shift in American thought…. The collapse of mental discipline marked one of
the last of the long series of declensions from seventeenth-century Puritanism.
American society, which had always tended toward increasing blandness of
conviction, took a further notable step in this direction during the last fifteen
years or so of the nineteenth century.24
As noted earlier, the debate between prescription and election is fundamental
to an understanding of the evolution of the curriculum in America. This debate
has been going on since the time of Jefferson, and it continues today as manifest
by the prevalence of distribution requirements at many schools and more
prescribed core curricula at still others. Nevertheless, the revolution initiated
by Eliot shifted dominance for the first time in American curricular history
from prescription to election, a dominance which election has maintained ever
since. This fundamental shift likewise “led step by step over time to the practice
of instituting academic ‘majors’ and ‘minor’ study concentrations, the
development of academic departments devoted exclusively to one or another
specific discipline, and a marked specialization of scholarship within
academe.”25 By 1900 many of the features familiar to higher education today
had appeared, features inconceivable without the shift from prescription to
election.
Although increasingly supplanted in the curriculum, “discipline” remained
a guiding force in the development and life of the student—at least as far as the
schools were concerned. Although under increasing attack, the in loco parentis
stance remained during the latter half of the nineteenth century, a stance
according to historian George Marsden, “associated with some old-time
Calvinist vigilance.”26 Indeed, “the price of retaining the in-loco-parentis stance
of the old-time college seemed to be that of preserving the old-time campus
disorders as well.” Nevertheless, there was some accommodation of student
interests. When James McCosh arrived as President of the College of New
Jersey in 1868, for example, he was not “a Puritan like Jonathan Edwards in
his attitude toward students”:
Rather, as in other matters, he mixed the new with the old, attempting to
retain the essential principles, while looking for whatever was good, or at
least a matter of indifference, in modernity…, for instance, he immediately
endorsed building a gymnasium and in good British fashion encouraged
collegiate sports. When he heard that students were gathering at a local
billiard hall, he ordered three billiard tables for the gymnasium.27
As it had since colonial times, the religious condition of the students remained
a concern and a priority. As McCosh put it: “No student passes through our
College without his being addressed from time to time, in the most loving
manner, as to the state of his soul.”28
The rise of faculty advisers and student counseling, first appearing at Johns
Hopkins in 1877 and Harvard in 1889 respectively, was a formal recognition
that “[institutional] size and the elective curriculum required some closer
attention to undergraduate guidance than was possible with an increasingly
professionally oriented faculty.”29 Though paternalism remained the guiding
principle toward students, some of the focus did change. Interest in utility,
particularly as manifest in philosophies such as the “Wisconsin Idea” with
its emphasis on service, did allow students more latitude in their pursuits.
The relative place of service and research relative to liberal learning remained,
as it does today, in contention. Many argued that liberal culture, not utility or
vocationalism, ought to be at the heart of the academic program, regardless
of institutional type. This contention, and the related claim that liberal
education was as “practical” as research or vocational training, if indeed not
more so, would gain adherents in the next era of evolution in American higher
education.
Insights from Black and Women’s Education

The evolution of African-American higher education is a poignant example
of the evolution of the curriculum that speaks directly to the themes noted at
the beginning of the chapter. During the Antebellum era, collegiate education
for blacks was practically nonexistent. Black higher education really started
after the Civil War and it provides one of the clearest examples of the liberal-
vocational dichotomy, especially in the competing philosophies promoted
by Booker T.Washington and W.E.B.DuBois. Essentially, Washington argued
that collegiate education for blacks ought to be of a vocational nature. He
believed blacks would be best served by practical training that would help
them to succeed in the real world of work. Study in the classical subjects of
the liberal arts might serve an ornamental purpose, but would do little to
advance blacks in American society. DuBois, on the other hand, believed

passionately that an education in the liberal arts, at least for “the talented
tenth,” would produce men who were roundly educated to care for more than
monetary success and, more important, who would lead the elevation of the
black race in America.30
DuBois argued that vocational education would ensure second-class status
for blacks and therefore he rejected Washington’s accommodationism. His
claims point to the fourth essential theme associated with the evolution of the
curriculum and the student: elite versus mass notions of higher education.
Charges of an ulterior or hidden curriculum, sometimes made one hundred
years later, but also of concern at the time, asserted that proponents of black
education were most interested in producing a compliant workforce that would
serve the needs of white agriculture and industry. Particularly strident were
revisionist charges that, starting after the Civil War and for long thereafter,
black education was geared not for citizenship or even for vocational servitude,
but for the preservation of a caste system, an assertion of white class hegemony
over blacks. That more philanthropic money went to support vocational training
than for liberal arts instruction was taken as proof of the revisionist claim;
altruistic motivations were dismissed as disingenuous.31 Historically black
colleges and universities offered both liberal and vocational education for blacks
throughout the twentieth century, but the opportunities afforded African
Americans did not begin to approach those of whites until white majority
institutions began opening their doors to minorities in significant numbers in
the 1960s and 1970s.
The focus of women’s education shifted in terms of geography and
curriculum in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Although arguably more
prominent in the South and Midwest during the antebellum period, after the
war women’s collegiate education made its strides in the North. By that time,
women’s education in the South had been devastated by the war and social
proscriptions against educating women in the North had relaxed. Although
antebellum Southern education for women had been based on the idea of
“separate spheres”—that women were to be educated differently than men and
for different purposes—women’s education in the North was more varied in
its philosophies. Even as female collegians pursued courses of study fairly
comparable to those in male institutions, many women at the women’s colleges
supported activism, service, and ultimately professionalism.32 Through
involvement with suffrage, social service and later social phenomena like
flapperdom, women’s education became a progressive force in collegiate and
national life. At the same time, it chaffed against and eventually helped overturn
the old morality symbolized by parietals. Like black education, women’s
collegiate education made significant strides before the wave of coeducation
in the 1960s and 1970s made women’s education a pervasive part of American
higher education.
Reaction, Liberal Culture, and General Education

Although the principle of election was the norm by the turn of the century,
there was increasing concern that electivism had been taken too far, that students’
courses of study had a lack of coherence and intellectual integration. More
worrisome was the presumed lack of liberal learning, that learning which
“‘liberated’ the learner from ignorance, provincialism, and philistinism” and
acquainted one with a broader common culture.33 As put by historians Brubacher
and Rudy:
The elective system…had made an earnest attempt to make the
curriculum more meaningful to the undergraduate by allowing him to
choose studies for their intrinsic rather than their disciplinary value.
But even this gain was offset by a concomitant loss. It won interest but
it lost integration…the elective principle resulted in a fragmentation of
the curriculum. With the atomization of the course of study it became
possible for students to turn in their credits as if they were clipping so
many coupons to get a degree. The whole system was symptomatic of
an intellectual agnosticism about any over-all unity or design. Nor did
requirements of concentration or distribution, where in force, produce
it, since even here individual courses were taught without much
conscious attention to their interrelation.34
The result was an interest in preserving and promoting liberal culture. The
liberal culture believed produced by liberal learning was an amalgamation
of “an aesthetic, a moral and a tacit social code” and it gained support in
academia because although “the idea of a shared ‘culture’ or paideia had
been too narrowly circumscribed in the classical conception of liberal
learning…e social and personal needs it sought to satisfy were real.”35 Liberal
culture stressed values, aesthetics, taste, and appreciation. Its advocates—
Abbott Lawrence Lowell at Harvard, Andrew Fleming West at Princeton,
George E. Woodberry at Columbia and many others, usually from the older
eastern schools, strongly favored the gentlemanly and humane tradition of
English education over what they perceived as the soulless fact-driven
Germanic research model.36
Notably, the philosophy of liberal culture “was unwilling to bring science
within its understanding or under its influence.”37 Its advocates sought breadth
of knowledge in art, literature, history, and philosophy.38 This point is most
important for, as will be seen, the creators of the liberal arts movement shared
the belief with those who espoused the philosophy of liberal culture that the
literary and humane traditions were critical to liberal education. However,
starting with the 1935 Virginia Plan, the liberal arts movement also argued an
equal place for mathematics and science alongside the humanities. The liberal
arts movement thus had some roots in the development of liberal culture in the
late nineteenth century, but by virtue of its advocacy for mathematics and
science, was also independent of the liberal culture movement.
Liberal culture was also elitist and was “associated with the rights, privileges,
and responsibilities of a limited class.”39 As a philosophy, argued Rudolph,
liberal culture “did not intend to be democratic, for it clearly was an open and
honest assertion of superiority.”40 Here again, interesting contrasts with the
later liberal arts movement can be drawn. As will be discussed more fully in
the following chapters, the first manifestations of the liberal arts movement at
Columbia, Chicago, and Virginia were all of an elite variety. These schools all
developed “honors courses” designed for select students. However, advocates
of, and institutions associated with, the liberal arts movement generally came
to see the liberal arts as critical to the education of all college students, and
thereby instituted courses required of all students at Chicago, Columbia, and
St. John’s. Yet Virginia largely maintained an elite Jeffersonian conception of
work in the liberal arts and thus shared a similarity with the liberal culture
philosophy that other institutions affected by the liberal arts movement
eventually shed.
When one takes in the totality of American colleges and universities in the
late nineteenth century, it becomes clear that there were several efforts to ensure
the place of “liberal culture” in the curriculum.41 One solution to balance election
and prescription, still widely employed today, but of questionable results in
the promotion of liberal learning, was to institute concentration and distribution
requirements. Requirements provided a theoretically compelling synthesis
because they provided for both breadth and depth in the college course of
study. A second approach, discussed later, was the introduction in the 1910s
and 1920s of honors work. A third approach, variously known as general
education, general studies or general culture, proposed an even more integrated
approach. Frederick Rudolph writes: “The general education movement, from
its beginnings at Columbia in 1919 to the celebrated Harvard report on the
subject in 1945, was an attempt to capture some of the sense of a continuing
intellectual and spiritual heritage that had fallen victim to the elective principle.”
In short, it “proposed to restore some balance, to revitalize the aristocratic
ideal of the liberal arts as the passport to learning.”42 As noted in the introduction,
the general education movement also sowed the seeds of the liberal arts
movement which gave rise to the Virginia Plan in 1935.
The first general education reform movement, started by John Dewey and
Alexander Meiklejohn in the early 1900s, gained momentum around the time
of World War I and was eventually slowed by vocational concerns raised by
the Great Depression, although the related liberal arts movement started in the
1930s and continued through the 1950s.43 These curricular reform movements
were direct reactions to the perceived dominance of illiberal education—a
commonly-held view. Indeed, writing in the 1970s, Frederick Rudolph echoed
Robert Maynard Hutchins’ assertions from the 1930s by positing that, “If in
the nineteenth century the curriculum defined the market for higher learning,
in the twentieth the market defined the curriculum.”44
There were many sometimes contradictory goals and values associated with
the general education movement. As would be seen throughout the twentieth
century, the devil was in the details. Some proposals were progressive, others
traditional, but they generally took aim at vocationalism, overspecialization,
and election.45 In the end, argued Ernest Boyer and Arthur Levine, “Perhaps
the central contradiction in the general education rhetoric of the 1920s was
between the demand that higher education adapt to the complexities of the
modern world, and equally the insistent call to recapture the idealism and
cultural unity of the prewar era.”46 Rudolph argued that those who ventured
into the general education realm “were trying to retrieve for the curriculum a
function that had sustained it since the Middle Ages: the cultivation and
transmission of the intellectual and philosophical inheritance of the Western
world as an instrument of man’s understanding of himself.”47 As will be seen,
even more than the first general education movement of the post-World War I
era, Rudolph’s analysis speaks to the goals of the liberal arts movement.
The Shifting Locus and Decline of In Loco Parentis

Just as academic reforms were reshaping higher education, so too were there
changes in student culture. The spread of literary societies, fraternities, and
organized athletics along with other student activities all contributed to the rise
of the “extracurriculum.” By 1900 administrators “expected administrative
changes and extracurricular activities to solve the problem of undergraduate
character development.” This period marks a significant divergence between
the curriculum and student development—a decision which many in higher
education would later come to regard with ambivalence. It would not be until
the 1990s that convergence would begin to bring the curriculum and student
development closer again. An example of this divergence, according to historian
Julie Reuben, was the rise of “student life,” which “replaced the classroom and
the chapel as the locus of the moral mission of the university.”48 Specifically,
“[institutions] hired special administrators to handle ‘student life,’ instituted
programs for student advising, hired special faculty for undergraduate teaching,
and created new activities such as “freshmen orientation.” The overall effect of
these administrative and extracurricular developments was to lessen “the
expectation that faculty should provide moral guidance and [to create] an
institutional separation between morality and knowledge.”49
Most important, argued Reuben, “by settling on group cohesiveness as the
best source of moral influence, university officials came to equate morality
with morale.”
Student-service professionals would never have the power to define moral
norms that the president and faculty of the classical college had exercised.
They devoted themselves to facilitating social bonds among students. They

discovered that imposing their own standards of behavior risked alienating
students from campus-sponsored social life. Regulating extracurricular
activities meant reaching a compromise between the demands of morale
and those of morality. The subsequent history of fraternities and athletics
indicates that morale often won.50
This separation of morality and knowledge which occurred after the turn of the
twentieth century has, at best, created ambiguity about morality, rights and
responsibilities, and student life in the academy, both in the past and in the
current day. The result has been that there are no broadly accepted standards
for evaluating moral claims that might be made in an effort to teach students
how to live in a proper and civil manner, particularly when such claims bump
up against personal freedoms.51 As will be discussed in the following chapters,
the reforms proposed in the Virginia Plan and its manifestations directly
interacted, not only with the curriculum, but also with various aspects of student
life, including dormitory living, fraternities, and collegiate athletics in its attempt
to unify the disparate experiences that characterized collegiate life by the 1930s.
Before the Virginia Plan: General Education at Columbia

Beginnings in Morningside Heights
Although older than the nation, much of Columbia’s renown has come from its
twentieth-century curricular innovations. In his essay on Columbia, Justus
Buchler remarked that “the year 1919 can be justly regarded as marking the
actual birth of the new Columbia College” because of the introduction of its
famous general education courses.52 Daniel Bell argued:
What is important here is that the new Columbia College was dedicated
firmly to the tradition of the liberal arts rather than to professionalism;
that it sought for social diversity in its student body; and that unlike some
later schools [read Chicago and St. John’s] it was committed to no doctrinal
philosophy of education other than exposing the student to major
intellectual ideas and expanding his imagination. It is the combination of
these three elements that gave general education at Columbia its distinctive
stamp.53
From its founding in 1754 as King’s College, Columbia College (as it was
renamed in 1784), was the sixth of the colonial colleges and, like the others, for
many years it offered a strictly classical curriculum.54 Indeed, an 1876 account
by professor John Burgess noted that Columbia was “a small old-fashioned
college, or rather school, for teaching Latin, Greek, and mathematics, and a
little metaphysics, and a very little natural science.”55
As was the case at many of its peer institutions, successive decades brought
electivism and an emphasis on graduate research to Columbia. Then, in 1920,
John Erskine began offering a General Honors course in which students read
and discussed one classic of Western literature a week.56 According to Kass,
“Erskine was primarily motivated by the desire to make up for the lack of
acquaintance with the best literature that he noticed among the undergraduates
in his classes. In addition, he thought that such a course would be useful to the
students later on in life by providing a common groundwork for discussion
and argument.”57 Bell argues further that, “The intention in reading the ‘great
books’ was to inculcate in the student a humanistic rather than a professional
orientation; to force him to confront a great work directly, rather than treat it
with the awe reserved for a classic; and, in the contemporary jargon, ‘to
acculturate’ a student whose background and upbringing had excluded him
from the ‘great traditions.’”58 As will be seen in Chapter 2, all of the forgoing
reasons, plus some additional ones, served as rationale for the proposals put
forth in the Virginia Plan.
The impetus for Erskine’s course also came from two other sources. One
was the desire to integrate the burgeoning knowledge produced by the German
research model increasingly employed in America. An earlier response was
the course set up during Alexander Meiklejohn’s presidency at Amherst College
in 1910 titled “Social and Economic Institutions.” It was designed to “unify”
or “integrate” the social sciences.59 The other source was World War I. The
United States government asked Columbia to set up a “War Issues” course that
would educate young American men in their democratic heritage. Additionally,
the faculty soon proposed a course devoted to “Peace Issues.” The two “issues”
courses resulted in an interdisciplinary course titled “Contemporary
Civilization” which drew on disciplines such as economics, history, philosophy,
and politics. First offered in the autumn of 1919, it was required of all
freshmen.60
Unlike the Contemporary Civilization course, or “C.C.” as it was known,
Erskine’s course was not required. In fact, it was open only to those students
interested in an extra course; this was thought of as “honors” work, hence the
name of the course, “General Honors.”61 Erskine believed that the course should
be a requirement, but initially there was significant faculty opposition to the
course, and approval was only secured when the course was made optional.
Many faculty members, some of whom had spent their entire careers studying
a particular author or work, rejected the notion that any good would come of
undergraduates reading a classic a week. The result, they feared, would be
butchery or, at best, dilettantism. Many also claimed that the youth had no
interest in reading masterpieces. Erskine countered that every book had to be
read for the first time at some point, and that acquaintance was far different
from mastery. It shows the profound effect that the great books movement had
on American higher education in the twentieth century to reflect on the fact
that, according to Mark Van Doren, who at the time was a young instructor in
Columbia’s English Department, many professors believed it was better for
students to read a textbook about the classics than to read the classics
themselves.62 Once implemented, and as would be the case with similar courses
at Chicago and Virginia, Erskine’s great books course proved tremendously
popular with students—so much so that it had to meet in sections.63 In light of
earlier faculty opposition it is ironic that, when Columbia’s Literature
Humanities course was instituted in 1937 for all under-graduates, it drew heavily
on Erskine’s course.64
In the following passage Bell provides a succinct summary of the
development of general education at Columbia and the courses in which that
education was manifest.
The tradition of the liberal arts at Columbia was embodied in the idea of
three broad courses—Contemporary Civilization, the Humanities, and
the Sciences—which would be required of all students. These courses
evolved slowly. Contemporary Civilization, at the start a one-year course,
in 1929 became a two-year sequence, the first year dealing primarily with
the intellectual traditions and institutional development of Western society,
and the second year, with changing emphases, focusing on contemporary
socioeconomic problems. The two-year Humanities sequence (the first
year was initiated in 1937, the second in 1947) concentrated in the first
year on the masterpieces of literature and philosophy, from Homer to the
nineteenth century, and in the second year on the master-pieces of music
and the plastic arts. Though in principle the College was committed to a
parallel organization in the Sciences (successive committees called for a
‘specially constructed and well-integrated two-year course in the natural
sciences’ and courses ‘to stress inclusive organizing principles of the
sciences rather than special techniques for mastering specialized subject
matters’), institutional and staffing difficulties confounded the various
efforts to create such general education science courses. From 1934 to
1941, a two-year course, Science A and B, was offered as an option to the
specialized science courses, but this ended during the war. Since World
War II the Science requirement has remained simply two years of any
science courses, a requirement that can be fulfilled by any selective
combination of two one-year or one two-year course, in any of a half-
dozen fields.65
Although changes have been made to them over time, the C.C. and Humanities
courses are still required of all Columbia undergraduates and still adhere to the
intention of familiarizing students with the Western tradition and its civilization.
Before the Virginia Plan: General Education at Chicago

Developments at Chicago
More than the events at Columbia, which gave birth to the general education
movement, the events at the University of Chicago, starting with the
reorganization of its undergraduate college in the 1930s, served to make the
reaction against electivism a national issue. Boyer and Levine argue that:
The most hotly debated experiment of the [first general education revival]
was “the College” at the University of Chicago. The person whose name
is inextricably linked with this venture is, of course, Robert Hutchins. In
reality the college was a series of experiments. It was launched before
Hutchins arrived and continued not only after he retired, but even after
the initial wave of general interest had long faded. The College at Chicago
was a radical approach to general education, embodying, in varying
degree, great books, interdisciplinary courses, early college admission,
comprehensive examinations, and a four-year fully-required course of
study. The prestige of the University of Chicago and the charisma of
Robert Hutchins caught the nation’s imagination. Parts of the Chicago
program were replicated in experimental colleges, honors colleges, and
schools across the country. St. John’s College is a direct descendant of
the Chicago plan.66
Here again is evidence that the literature relating to the liberal arts movement is
incomplete and sometimes confused, for while what transpired at St. John’s
was certainly related to the reforms—ones both adopted and rejected—at
Chicago, the “New Program” at St. John’s was first and foremost a descendant
of the Virginia Plan, which came to St. John’s via Chicago.67
By not conflating the two programs, Daniel Bell does a better job than
Boyer and Levine in describing the connection. In 1966 Bell argued that:
Over the past twenty-five years the College of the University of Chicago
has undergone the most thoroughgoing experiment in general education
of any college in the United States. Many confusions about the purposes
and curriculum of the Chicago College have arisen because of a loose
identification of its curriculum with that of St. John’s College of Annapolis
or with the Great Books program, which has been conducted in the
university extension. Actually, the Chicago experiment resembled neither
of these. Nor was the college completely the embodiment of the ideas of
Robert M.Hutchins, the genie of the university. Though the general
conception of the “Chicago plan” was outlined by President Hutchins in
his 1936 Yale lectures (published as The Higher Learning in America),
the character of the college was developed by its successive deans, Aaron
J.Brumbaugh, Clarence Faust, and F.Champion Ward, and its curriculum
by the college faculty; and the detailed program, in fact, was somewhat
removed from Hutchins’ ideas, most of which were embodied, rather, in
the curriculum of St. John’s.68
The history of curricular development at Chicago is convoluted, a “tangle” as
Bell put it. How did this come about? Reform of the undergraduate college at
Chicago started before the arrival of Hutchins on the Midway in 1929. From its
founding in 1892, the university split undergraduate education into two parts.
The first two years were called the Academic College (later changed to the
Junior College) and, according to Chicago’s first president, William Rainey
Harper, “the work of the first two years partakes largely of the Academic
character. The regulations must still be strict. The scope of election is limited.”
Reflecting the vestiges of the classical curriculum, from 1892 until 1905, Latin
was prescribed in the Junior College, being understood as “the foundation of
the curriculum and essential to a liberal education.” However, at the urging of
faculty members in the sciences, starting in 1905 students pursuing the bachelor
of science degree could elect to take a modern language in place of Latin.69
The last two years of undergraduate work, first known as the University
College and later the Senior College, were preparatory for graduate study.
According to Harper’s initial 1891 notes:
The close of the second year marks the beginning of a new period…. The
student begins to specialize and in many cases may to advantage select
subjects which will bear directly or indirectly upon the work of his chosen
calling…. The student gradually changes from the College atmosphere
to that of the University. Different motives entice him to work.70
In 1923 a commission on the Future of the Colleges was appointed by President
Ernest DeWitt Burton. The commission emphasized the centrality of “general
education,” which it defined as: “the attainment of independence in thinking
in which civilized societies of the past and of the present have done and are
doing their thinking;…independence in appreciation of the fine arts, and the
absorption of the fine arts into the individual’s life;…independence in moral
living.”71
To achieve these ends, it was proposed that all undergraduate education be
reorganized into an administrative unit known as “The College.” Also, the
credit system would be abolished, replaced with a number of comprehensive
examinations that an undergraduate could take at any time. A student who
successfully passed these exams could theoretically receive his bachelor’s
degree after only one year of residence.72 Coupled with later reforms, the
possibility that young students could receive their bachelor’s degree in less
than the four years common at other institutions eventually contributed to the
undoing of the most radical undergraduate reform at Chicago, but this was not
to happen until the 1950s. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that, as had happened
at Jefferson’s University of Virginia more than a hundred years prior, the most
radical and idiosyncratic elements of the curriculum and administrative
organization—which were integral to the reforms from their inception—
ultimately had to be revised to be more commensurate with the standard
practices of other institutions.
When Robert Maynard Hutchins came to the Quadrangles of the University
of Chicago in 1929, he was one of the youngest presidents ever to lead a
major research university in America. Only thirty years old, he had been
Dean of the Yale Law School before accepting the invitation to come to Hyde
Park. Soon after arriving on the Midway, Hutchins promised to bring renewed
vitality to the institution that had burst so brightly into the educational
establishment in the 1890s under the guiding hand of Harper, only to languish
subsequently under the direction of more patrician presidents in the 1910s
and 1920s.
Hutchins’ tenure as President and later Chancellor of Chicago lasted more
than two decades, from 1929 to 1951. In Hutchins’ University, Chicago
historian William McNeill argues that Hutchins did more to shape the
institution than any of the presidents before or since, save perhaps Harper.
For just as Harper went about establishing the University of Chicago as
something “bran splinter new,” so too did Hutchins create a new philosophy
of undergraduate education at Chicago that continues to influence curricula.
McNeill argues that Hutchins’ philosophy came directly out of Hutchins’
own life long search for metaphysical and moral truth. Like many academics
of the time, Hutchins came from a strong Protestant background. Son of a
Presbyterian minister who worked at Oberlin and was later president of Berea
College, Hutchins in many ways embodied the Protestant ethic throughout
his life. His family’s Eastern and Puritan background, combined with the
social connections he made at Yale as an undergraduate, assured him of a
place in the WASP Establishment. Yale and his stint in the service during
World War I also introduced him to the martini, tobacco, and ensured that
“…his speech henceforth would be sprinkled with the mild profanity
customary in masculine precincts.” 73 His slip from orthodoxy was also
manifest in his gradual abandonment of Calvinist religion as a source of
truth.
As a student at Yale Law School Hutchins had flirted with the law as a path
to truth and justice, but quickly came to believe that the law had little to do
with either of the realms. Of law schools, Hutchins later wrote, “Jurisprudence,
which should be central in any law curriculum, is studied by few and like legal
history is regarded as a peripheral or ornamental subject.”74 Ultimately he came
to believe that truth could be found by delving into the great classical texts of
the Western cultural tradition. In accordance with this growing conviction, the
Chicago College was to have “general—that is, liberal-arts—education as its
primary objective.”75
Much of Hutchins’ increasing confidence in the veracity of this path found

its promulgation in the thoughts of his friend and fellow faculty member,
Mortimer Adler.McNeill argues that Adler, even more than Hutchins, was the
true radical influence at the university. Adler “was interested only in the pages
of the Great Books, and, in particular, in the pages of Aristotle and St. Thomas
Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.”76
Before establishing the role that Thomist Aristotelianism played in the
educational philosophies of Adler and Hutchins—a role that led to the pejorative
charge by their critics that the liberal artists were engaged in
“neomedievalism”—a brief examination of the Summa and its historical context
is useful. Writing in 1945, Bertrand Russell recorded that:
[Medieval Christian philosophy] which hitherto had been Augustinian
and therefore largely Platonic, was enriched by new elements due to
contact with Constantinople and the Mohammedans. Aristotle, during
the thirteenth century, came to be known fairly completely in the West,
and, by the influence of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, was
established in the minds of the learned as the supreme authority after
Scripture and the Church. Down to the present day, he has retained this
position among Catholic philosophers.77
What philosophical contributions did Albertus Magnus [Albert the Great]
(1193–1280) and his pupil Thomas Aquinas (1225 or 1226–1274) make that
were so revolutionary? Historian Edward Peters argued that:
Albert’s greatest efforts were directed at assimilating the body of

Aristotle’s natural philosophy [which emphasized dialectic, i.e., logic]
into a plan of Christian learning without conflicting with revelation and
dogma. To do so, Albert distinguished between two spheres of knowledge.
Theology, he said, dealt with supernatural things and was reached by
faith; philosophy dealt with natural things and was reached by reason.
Albert argued that these two kinds of knowledge and two ways of knowing
were not incompatible, for they lead to the same faith and the same truth….
Albert attempted to create a system of natural philosophy that could be
tested by reason and experience and proved by purely rational means
without dependence upon revelation or theology. By sharpening the
distinction between theology and philosophy, Albert, heavily influenced
by Aristotle, created one sphere in which reason could claim legitimate
authority.78
Although Albert was formative in Aquinas’s development, it took Aquinas, and

his superior knowledge of Aristotle, whom he called “The Philosopher,” to
establish scholasticism in its highest form. Russell offered that:
Even if every one of his doctrines were mistaken, the Summa would remain
an imposing intellectual edifice. When Aquinas wishes to refute some
doctrine, he states it first, often with great force, and almost always with
an attempt at fairness. The sharpness and clarity with which he
distinguishes arguments derived from reason and arguments derived from
revelation are admirable. He knows Aristotle well, and understands him
thoroughly, which cannot be said of an earlier Catholic philosopher.79
These Aristotelian philosophical developments of the High Middle Ages were

significant, Peters argues, because: “They helped to challenge the
PlatonicAugustinian tradition of thought that neglected material reality and
focused upon invisible forms and ideas in the mind of God that were more
‘real’ than their crude and imperfect earthly copies. The new [Aristotelian]
studies argued instead for the regularity, coherence, and intelligibility of material
creation.”80 Whereas Plato had argued that only philosophers had the gift of
leaving the cave and understanding the world of Truth and Forms, Aristotle
argued that the truth was revealed in the sensible world, where universals, not
Forms, were reality.
Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica as a “…vast compendium of both
philosophy and theology, the monument to Aristotelianism in its Christian
form.”81 In it, Aquinas deals with numerous “first questions,” including: the
existence of God, the soul, evil, ethics, man’s ultimate happiness, free will,
first causes, and so on.82 In 1879 Pope Leo XIII codified the Summa as the
official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. Because of this enduring
official status, Russell argues that “Saint Thomas, therefore, is not only of
historical interest, but is a living influence, like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and
Hegel—more, in fact, than the latter two.”83
Adler’s interest in Aquinas was hardly pre-ordained, and in some sense
ironic. Adler was a nonobservant Jew and his promotion of Thomist
Aristotelianism was dumbfounding to a largely Protestant faculty. His “espousal
of Aristotelian philosophy, and his agile defense of the version of Aristotelianism
set forth in the bulky pages of Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, seemed perverse
and, indeed, incredible to almost everyone he encountered at Chicago.” In
fact, in university circles at that time, the Summa was widely dismissed “as
mere lumber from Europe’s medieval attic.”84 Yet Aquinas appealed to Adler
because:
Aquinas’s scholastic method of introducing every question with objections

to his views, then spelling out the truth in crisp, logical form before refuting
the initial objections with the same clear logic fitted Adler’s habit of mind
perfectly. Here he found reasoned answers to the most important questions
a man could ask, as well as armor against a vast array of objections to the
answers St. Thomas found convincing.85
It is unclear, however, whether Adler’s formidable intellect was the genesis

of Hutchins’ belief “that the core of a liberal arts education ought to rest in
firsthand acquaintance with the books that had shaped Western literary
culture….” This proposition, argues McNeill, “…seemed completely
convincing to Hutchins even before he made his own acquaintance with a
suitable selection of such books through his classroom partnership with
Adler.”86 Similarly, Hutchins’ friend and biographer Harry Ashmore notes
that“…employing the liberal arts as the basis for general education [was] an
acknowledged inheritance from William Rainey Harper, as was Hutchins’
insistence that specialized research and training be confined to the graduate
and professional schools of the University.”87 However, Ashmore also argues
that Hutchins “had no firm ideas about the content of undergraduate education,
except that it should be different from the miscellaneous elective courses he
had endured at Yale.”88 During this early time in Hutchins’ tenure, Adler argued
strenuously that “the classics of Western civilization, beginning with the
ancient Greeks,…could provide ‘the whole of a liberal education or certainly
the core of it.’” In fact, Adler told Hutchins, after his assessment of what
Hutchins had learned at Yale, that he would be a “wholly uneducated man” if
he did not take a crash course in the classics.”89 Hutchins’ curricular philosophy
may not have been solely influenced by Adler, and indeed Hutchins never
claimed that it was, but there is no doubt that Adler was a primary influence
in Hutchins’ beliefs about liberal education.
By Hutchins’ appointment to the presidency in 1929 the College proposals
first conceived during Burton’s tenure were well-formulated and with Hutchins’
support a revised undergraduate curriculum, known as the “New Plan,” was
developed. Year-long interdisciplinary courses in the humanities, natural
sciences, and social sciences were instituted. Under the New Plan, once these
and additional departmental requirements were completed, and competency
was assured by success on the comprehensive exams that included English
composition and foreign language, a student was awarded the bachelor’s degree.
These developments not only served to focus increased attention on the
undergraduate experience at Chicago, but they helped resolve a tension that
had existed since the institution’s founding when John D.Rockefeller’s desire
for a vital college, with a focus on teaching, was overshadowed by William
Rainey Harper’s unceasing promotion of a world-class university devoted to
research.90 Additional changes to the undergraduate college would be made in
the late 1930s and in the 1940s. However, one further development of
significance needs to be noted here.
Although Chicago did not adopt a curriculum based on the great books as
was done later at St. John’s, it does, as Bell has noted, carry that association.
There are three reasons for this: one, the New Plan interdisciplinary courses
all employed many classics of the Western tradition in their syllabi; two, the
illfated University of Chicago Committee on the Liberal Arts, which was formed
in 1936 with Adler, Barr, Buchanan, and others as members, advocated a

curriculum based on the Virginia Plan great books scheme; and three, Hutchins
and Adler played formative roles in the great books movement, which took
several manifestations, including a great books course for undergraduates (and
later for law students), a great books extension program for adult education,
and the development of the Great Books Foundation, which influenced
Encydopedia Britannica and its Great Books of the Western World series.
The sole development mentioned above to precede the Virginia Plan was
the great books course co-taught by Hutchins and Adler starting in 1930.
This course, titled simply “General Honors 110” used essentially the same
reading list that Erskine had employed for his General Honors course at
Columbia, which, it will be recalled, Adler had taken as an undergraduate.91
Because Adler was disdainful of the practice of employing textbooks when
original readings were available, the course used only primary sources.
Hutchins agreed: “If the student should know about Cicero, Milton, Galileo,
or Adam Smith, why should he not read what they wrote? Ordinarily what he
knows about them he learns from texts which must at best be second-hand
versions of their thought.”92
Eighty freshmen applied to be in the new General Honors 101 course; after
interviewing them, Adler selected twenty to participate. The class met once a
week for two hours around a large oval table to discuss the week’s book.
Accounts suggest that Adler played “the heavy” pushing the students to clarify
their thoughts, while Hutchins, who himself had only recently read most of the
classics under Adler’s tutelage in preparation for the course, usually played a
softer, nurturing role.93 One student at the time, Sidney Hyman, recalls that the
class was very serious, with little laughter at first. Students were required by
Adler to stick to the text at hand; the class was not a college bull session.
Indeed Adler was often miserable until a student had an epiphany, at which
point the students felt heroic. Hutchins, by contrast, was relatively lighthearted
and witty. In addition to guiding students he made common cause with them.
In class Hutchins quipped lines including, “If appointed Pope I’d want to be
called Blasphemous I” and “The Faculty aren’t very good, but the President
and the students are wonderful.” The real benefit of the course, according to
Hyman, was that the students came to appreciate that ideas mattered and that
“although we had only a half-baked understanding of these ideas, at least we
were aware that these books were out there.”94 The course took two years to
complete. At the end of each year, outside examiners such as Scott Buchanan
of Virginia and Richard McKeon of Columbia would conduct oral examinations.
When the course ended, some of the students successfully petitioned the
University to extend the course for two more years so that the students could
reread the books.95
Of the great books impetus, former dean of the University of Chicago
Humanities Division Robert Streeter notes that:
Hutchins’s advocacy of study programs based upon the classic texts, which
came to be known as the Great Books, challenged conventional
compartmentation in the academy. The works were chosen as noble
illuminations of persistent human problems, from the writings of
philosophers, artists, and scientists. A major presupposition underlying
the study of these major works, whether undertaken in school and college
or among adult groups, was that the discussion these books stimulated
led to a more mature understanding of present-day issues, while at the
same time sharpening the students’ skills as readers and thinkers.96
It is interesting to note that while the faculty generally reacted negatively to
Hutchins’ perceived circumvention of faculty prerogatives and to the doctrinaire
Adler, the great books course was wildly popular with the students and it took
the campus by storm.97 The immense popularity of the great books course would
later be replicated in Chicago’s extension program. The same scenario would
be found some twenty years later at Virginia when Barr, likewise subject to
withering attacks from some faculty members, taught a great books seminar
which was extremely popular with the students, so much so that it too received
a successful student petition for continuance. The Virginia scenario will be
treated in detail in Chapter 6.
Conclusion
The developments at Columbia and Chicago show that, after halting moves
toward reclamation of a curricular middle ground as attempted by the earlier
proponents of liberal culture, the general education movement gave further
impetus to those who sought amelioration of the elective system’s worst results.
Rudolph wrote that:
The general education movement, as the effort to define and enforce a
common curriculum has been called, began as a response to the sense of
bewilderment with which many students faced the freedom of the elective
course of study. It received clarification during and after World War I,
when a consciousness of western values and national problems found
expression in courses designed to orient students to their cultural
inheritance and their responsibilities as citizens.98
This fear, that cultural inheritance and civic responsibilities were being lost,
was not new. Rather it was a twentieth-century manifestation of the fear of
declension. As noted earlier, many of the Calvinist Puritans who founded
Harvard were Oxbridge men who understood the necessity of an educated
ministry. They feared their city on a hill might be lost to the barbarism of the
wilderness lest they ensured the production, in the New World, of ministers to
safeguard and promote the Word. While seventeenth-century divines feared
the power of the Old Deluder and the wilderness, their eighteenth-century
counterparts saw declension in the adoption of Restorationist culture by Boston’s

elite and the increasing Yankee quest for mammon. Likewise, preservation of
cultural inheritance and promotion of civic responsibilities were deemed critical
by Jefferson to the success of the republican experiment, if the tenuous rescue
of English liberties by the American Revolution was not to be lost. It is to
Jefferson and his University that this book now turns.
CHAPTER 2
The University of Virginia and the
Creation of the Virginia Plan
“We wish to establish…a university on a plan so broad
and liberal and modern”
—Thomas Jefferson
The University of Virginia

Mr. Jefferson’s University
The institutional history of Virginia requires additional consideration. The early
history of the University of Virginia, which is well known, offers a unique
window on some of the most significant curricular developments in American
educational history. Unlike the colonial colleges and even the earlier state
universities, from its founding the University of Virginia was distinctive.
Jefferson’s placement of the Rotunda, for example, with its library containing
the best of classical and enlightenment thought, rather than a chapel at the center
of the academic grounds made physical this original and symbolic change.
Yet Jefferson’s Enlightenment philosophy extended far beyond the
architecture of the university. Like others of his generation, Jefferson was
anxious that the liberties secured in the Revolution be nurtured and preserved,
for history had shown that the republic was a most fragile political form. A
natural aristocracy of leaders, one based on merit as opposed to an artificial
one based on the accidents of birth, was needed to prevent the young country
from declining into ignorance and tyranny. “Those persons whom nature hath
endowed with genius and virtue,” Jefferson wrote, “should be rendered, by
liberal education, worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the
rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to the
charge without regard to wealth, birth, or other accidental condition or
circumstance.”1
Jefferson’s proposal for a pyramidal—and elitist—structure of public
education in Virginia from elementary education up to a capstone university
was not realized during his lifetime, save for the university. Of it, Jefferson
had written: “We wish to establish…a university on a plan so broad and liberal
and modern as to be worth patronizing with the public support, and be a
temptation to the youth of other states to come and drink of the cup of
knowledge, and fraternize with us.”2 These conditions were achieved, albeit
largely for Southern young men of “artificial” aristocratic lineage.3 When the
University of Virginia opened for classes in 1825, Jefferson’s curriculum was
primarily elective in approach and broad in content.
41
Letting the student choose what courses to take—the elective system—was

a radical idea and Virginia was the sole institution in the country to employ
electivism as the modus operandi; other colleges had prescribed curricula. In
1823 Jefferson wrote to Harvard tutor George Ticknor that:
I am not fully informed of the practices of Harvard, but there is one
principle we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe
by nearly every college and academy in the United States, that is, the
holding of the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and
disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to
qualify them for the particular vocation to which they are destined. We
shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they
shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualifications only and
sufficient age.4
While far beyond what was offered at other institutions, election was nevertheless
qualified. The University of Virginia Catalogue, 1832–33 stated that: “Every
student is free to attend the schools of his choice, and no other than he chooses;
provided, that if under the age of twenty-one, he shall attend at least three
professors….”5 While students were allowed to choose which school or schools
in the University they wished to attend, their choices ended at that point. “Once
a student had chosen his field of specialization, no electives were permitted
within a school; there the course leading to the degree was entirely prescribed.
Students not interested in securing a degree, however, were free to take whatever
courses they wished. This was essentially a ‘parallel’ course scheme, combined
with provision for ‘partial’ courses for special students.”6 Finally, the Enactments
by Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia [1825] reflected that Jefferson
was a dedicated student of the classics and believed them integral to liberal
education. These original Enactments provided that only upon passing an
examination in the Latin language could one receive a diploma from the
University.7
Qualified election was not the only significant change made in
Charlottesville. Traditional degrees, such as the Artium Baccalaurei were not
awarded; instead graduates received a diploma from one or more of the eight
schools at the university. Such novelty could not last. As later happened with
the “Hutchins College” at the University of Chicago, the University of Virginia
was forced by necessity to largely abandon its idiosyncrasies and adopt more
conventional academic policies.8 Nevertheless, Virginia was recognized as
establishing electivism in American higher education. Significantly, Harvard
President Charles Eliot, who, starting in the 1870s finally won a permanent
and indeed dominant place for electivism in American higher education, credited
Jefferson as the progenitor of the elective system in America although Virginia
was apparently not the first school to employ a form of the elective system.9 In
a report to the Virginia General Assembly in 1845, Professor William B.Rogers
The University of Virginia and the Creation of the Virginia Plan • 43
wrote that, “Many years before the establishment of the University of Virginia
an election of studies was allowed at the College of William and Mary.”10
While Williamsburg witnessed limited election in its curriculum, Charlottesville
was nevertheless the first to see electivism made central in its philosophy of
higher education.
Within the eight “schools” Jefferson established at the university, both
classical and contemporary subjects were offered. Bruce listed them as follows:
I.—Ancient Languages: Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; and there were to be
taught in the same school in addition, belles-lettres, rhetoric, ancient history,
and ancient geography; II.—Modern Languages: French, Italian, Spanish,
German, and English in its Anglo-Saxon form, while modern history and
modern geography were also to be included in the same course; III.—
Mathematics in all its branches, to which was to be appended military and
civil architecture; IV.—Natural Philosophy: the laws and properties of bodies
in general, such as mechanics, statics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneumatics,
acoustics, and optics; and the science of astronomy was also to be attached
to this chair; V.—Natural History: the sciences of botany, mineralogy,
zoology, chemistry, geology, and rural economy; VI.—Anatomy and
Medicine: the sciences of anatomy and surgery, the history of the progress
and the theories of medicine, physiology, pathology, materia medica, and
pharmacy; VII.—Moral Philosophy: the science of the mind, general
grammar, and ethics; and VIII.—Law: common and statute law, chancery
law, federal law, civil and mercantile law, law of nature and nations, and
the principles of government and political science.11
One will remember from the discussion of the Yale Report of 1828 that advocates
of collegiate education during the colonial and antebellum periods believed
that the prescribed classical course of study prepared one for life, and thus by
definition, one’s vocation. As noted above, Jefferson believed that to be educated,
men of necessity needed to be familiar with the classic works of Western
civilization. The crafters of the Virginia Plan more than one hundred years later
would draw on this fact in support of their curriculum centered in part on the
great books. The validity of their claim will be treated in the next chapter. For
now, suffice it to say that in consideration of his emphasis on election and a
broad curriculum that included the classics, historians of American higher
education rightfully acknowledge Thomas Jefferson’s bold and farsighted
educational vision, the “hobby of his old age.”
What Became of Jefferson’s University

The radical quality of Jefferson’s innovations at his university had long faded
by the twentieth century. The historical literature bears out that Virginia’s
notoriety has traditionally derived from its early nineteenth-century innovations,
not its twentieth-century ones. One reason is that in terms of its structure and
educational philosophy, other universities had come to look more like Virginia
with the spread of electivism in the postbellum era, and Virginia had come to
look much like other universities with a standardized curriculum and standard
degrees. That Virginia had not maintained its unique character is not surprising.
The lack of preparation and maturity possessed by many students, for example,
made Jefferson’s desire to offer only universitylevel instruction essentially
impossible. From the start the University had served as much as an academy as
it had a college, not to mention a university. Jefferson wrote to W.B.Giles in
December 1825:
We were obliged to receive last year shameful Latinists in the classical
school of the University, such as we will certainly refuse as soon as we
can get from better schools a sufficient number of the properly instructed
to form a class. We must get rid of the Connecticut tutor.12
It seems unlikely that nineteenth-century Virginia was ever able to rid itself
of “shameful Latinists” since Latin was required for the B.A. degree until
World War II. In 1892 President Henry Shepherd of the College of Charleston
recalled that:
During my own student life at the University of Virginia I cannot recall,
in my course of instruction in Latin, a single shadowy reminiscence of
aesthetic hint, critical suggestion, culture flavor, or stylistics inspiration.
It was a mournful and plaintive round of local relations and
prepositions,…the distinction between sic and ita, ergo and igitur….
Nothing, save my early home environment and my own instinct, preserved
me from chaos and disintegration. I survived the ordeal of my university
training by a species of literary transcendentalism.13
By the early 1900s, the University of Virginia was quite similar to other colleges
and universities. Jefferson’s vision had been significantly remodeled, not only
with the academic and degree alterations mentioned earlier, and the symbolic
changes that came with the reconstruction of the Rotunda after the disastrous
fire of 1895, but also with the decision, quite contrary to Jefferson’s vision, to
install a president as the leader of the university. Edwin A. Alderman, who was
president of Tulane and previously of the University of North Carolina, was
named the first president of the University of Virginia in 1904. It would be
Alderman who first undertook the goal of restoring real distinction to the
university. Two future authors of the Virginia Plan—Robert Gooch and
Stringfellow Barr—were undergraduates during Alderman’s tenure and it is to
them, and their friend Scott Buchanan, that this study now turns.
Gooch, Buchanan, and Barr

Robert Kent Gooch was born on September 26, 1893 in Roanoke, Virginia. As
an undergraduate at Virginia, Gooch was the quarterback of the football team
and was very popular with his classmates. Gooch also excelled in the classroom
and he was a member of Omicron Delta Kappa and the Raven Society, the
University’s two oldest honor societies. After receiving his B.A. and M.A. from
Virginia in 1914 and 1915 respectively, he proceeded to Oxford as a Rhodes
Scholar. Lord Annan noted that “Before the war, Oxford was a private liberal
arts university with an exceptionally privileged social-class composition and
ethos.”14 This elite environment made a profound imprint on Gooch and, as
will be seen, informed his educational beliefs for his entire career.
Gooch’s time at Oxford was interrupted by World War I, after which he
spent a short time working for the Burrough’s Adding Machine Company. Out
of boredom he returned to England to finish his work at Oxford from which he
earned a B.A. in 1920, and as a non-resident, an M.A. in 1922, and a Ph.D. in
1924. After three years of teaching at William and Mary, Gooch returned to
Charlottesville in 1924 where he became a faculty member in the Political
Science department.15 An Anglophile, Gooch inherited a love of academic ritual
at Oxford, which he subsequently sought to uphold at the University of Virginia.
In 1932 he succeeded Armistead Dobie as the grand marshal of all academic
functions at the university, a post he held until his retirement in 1964.16
Born on March 17, 1895 in Washington, as a young boy Scott Milross
Buchanan moved with his family to Jeffersonville, Vermont. He attended
Amherst College during Alexander Meiklejohn’s tenure, and after graduating
in 1916, taught Greek at Amherst for a year. After serving in the Navy during
World War I, Buchanan attended Balliol College, Oxford for two years as a
Rhodes Scholar where he read philosophy. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy
from Harvard in 1925 and then until 1929 was Assistant Director of the People’s
Institute in New York where he worked with Mark Van Doren, Richard McKeon,
and John Erskine’s former student, Mortimer Adler, who was offering programs
of study in western civilization to interested adults as part of the Institute’s
educational programs.17
The Institute had been in existence for three decades when Buchanan joined
in 1925 and it was in this environment that Buchanan first began to formulate
his philosophy of education.18 Long discussions on a host of topics, including
ethics, philosophy, science, history, literature, and epistemology often followed
formal lectures at the Institute. After immersing himself in this environment
for a few years Buchanan “began to see some form in the chaos and to make
some judgments.” In addition to agreeing to accept Adler’s advice to use the
Columbia Honors Course in Great Books for Institute seminars being held at
the Public Library, Buchanan decided that he should teach two subjects that
seemed to be missing in the minds of Institute students. The first was
mathematics, “ignorance of which was proving a real barrier to communication
and understanding.” The second was “poetry or poetics, the free use of the
imagination as an auxiliary to abstract doctrine.” Why these two? Buchanan
stated that:
Much to my surprise, I found that mathematics and poetry run parallel

patterns, such that one illuminates the other and sometimes, though not
always, they can be understood together when they are unintelligible apart.
Ordinary language attests to the connection, as when one counts numbers
and recounts a story, or when geometrical figures are compared with
figures of speech, or when in Greek the word for ratio is analogon, or
when physiological functions can be expressed in mathematical
functions…. The symbolic elements of poetry are words, and the
corresponding elements of mathematics are ratios. It is rather easy to
pass from these symbolic elements to the aspects of reality which they
designate. Words stand for qualities; ratios stand for relations. Qualities
in relation can be built by ratio-cination into the structure of poetry and
mathematics, into the worlds that tragedies and comedies comprehend.
But clear as such a conclusion can be made, it floats like a nebula in
space, or like a cloud in the wind. It begs for context and substantiation.
The elements seem to be fictions.19
Buchanan’s increasing understanding of the relations between poetry and
mathematics was augmented by insight from another Institute colleague, Richard
McKeon. Like Adler, McKeon was on the faculty of Columbia University and
also a regular fixture at the People’s Institute. McKeon had studied medieval
philosophy at the Sorbonne and when Buchanan published Poetry and
Mathematics in 1929 McKeon provided the book’s context. Many years later
Buchanan wrote that:
[McKeon] insisted that I had stumbled into a rediscovery of the seven
liberal arts, the trivium—grammar, rhetoric, and logic—and the
quadriviutn—arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. He further
insisted that we three ought to proceed with a revision of the traditional
forms and a reconstruction of them for the sake of the order and
articulation they could bring to the contemporary college and
university. We also speculated on the possibility of making a modern
trivium and quadrivium the basis of a curriculum for a People’s
University…. 20
The desire, because of its hoped-for-utility, to understand contemporary
knowledge within the historical framework of the seven liberal arts of the trivium
and quadrivium, became a guiding goal for Buchanan, Adler, and later others
including Mark Van Doren, Robert Hutchins, and Stringfellow Barr. Buchanan
described the beginning of this effort in the later 1920s as follows:
The first year Adler, McKeon, and I gave a series of lectures at Cooper
Union on the traditional structure of a university, using the forms of the
traditional European universities and filling them with the content of
modern learning. For the sake of clarity we kept the old terminology,
poetry divided into grammar, rhetoric, and logic; mathematics divided

into arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.21
The decision on the part of Buchanan, Adler, and the others to keep the
historical terminology of the seven liberal arts would prove to be pivotal to
the future of their endeavors. Even though Buchanan and the others claimed
that they were interested in applying the old terms to modern knowledge and
research because of the clarity they would hopefully provide in their effort,
their detractors saw not clarity but instead a reactionary scholasticism implicit
in the use of the historical terminology of the trivium and quadrivium. By the
1940s these vying contentions commanded national attention, especially
within the academy.
These debates will be treated in subsequent chapters; for now it is important
to understand how this historical conceptualization of the liberal arts was applied
by Buchanan and his colleagues. Buchanan’s own words nicely summarize
his understanding of the relation between contemporary knowledge and
traditional terminology:
Modern mathematical content fits into the traditional forms pretty much
as [follows]…figures, numbers, ratios and proportions, equations and
functions, correspond to the quadrivium. The poetic content is well revised
to fit the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. These seven liberal arts,
the two divisions paralleling each other, form the trunk of the tree of
knowledge. The three-branched top of the tree divides into the traditional
professional subject matters, medicine, law, and theology.22
This conceptualization of knowledge provided these budding “liberal artists”

not only with an understanding of the relation of various branches of
contemporary knowledge but also with a powerful pedagogical tool, namely,
the study of the great books of the Western canon. Again, in Buchanan’s own
words:
Our study of the formal liberal arts began to throw light on the [great]
books. A great book is the product of the liberal arts; the authors are
liberal artists, masters of the arts. The great books improve the mind
because they induce the formal habits of learning in the reader and
discussant. The aim of the liberal arts is insight, understanding,
imagination, and finally the transformation of the student into his own
teacher and the teacher of others. The result of liberal education is
lifelong learning and teaching. The social fruit of the tree of knowledge
is an intellectual culture. The rediscovery of the liberal arts could be
the much-needed beginning of the reconstruction of education in this
country.23
Buchanan’s years at the People’s Institute thus proved to be formative for they
strongly influenced the intellectual and career paths that he would subsequently
follow over the course of his life. At the end of the 1920s the People’s Institute
group scattered. Buchanan joined the philosophy faculty at the University of
Virginia in 1929 where he and his old friend from Oxford, Stringfellow Barr,
initiated a true educational collaboration that waxed and waned for the next
forty years.24
Frank Stringfellow Barr was born on January 15, 1897, in Suffolk, Virginia.
When he was ten, his mother, Ida Stringfellow, and his father, William
Alexander Barr, who was the Episcopal minister of the church in Suffolk,
moved the family to Lynchburg, Virginia, and later to New Orleans, where
his father was the dean of the Episcopal Cathedral. Early in childhood Barr
became known by the nickname “Winkie” which he and those close to him
used throughout his life.25 After one year at Tulane University, which he did
not enjoy, Barr decided to transfer to the University of Virginia, where, in
counsel remarkably similar to what Buchanan would later advocate for
undergraduates, Barr was told by his father to take math, Latin, and Greek,
and whatever else he took did not matter, because he had “no faith” in what
the colleges were teaching.26
Barr excelled once he was in Charlottesville. The college curriculum at
Virginia in the 1910s featured a conventional mix of requisite classical languages
and a series of distribution requirements.27 Barr did very well in his courses
and ironically, given his professional career as an historian, Barr never took a
course in history.28 Of Richard Dabney, one of the history professors with whom
Barr would later be a colleague, Barr said: “I loved Richard Heath Dabney, he
was a wonderful old boy, but what he would say about history didn’t interest
me at all.”29 Barr also served on the yearbook—Corks and Curls—and was a
member of Alpha Tau Omega. In 1916 Barr earned his B.A. degree in English.
The following year he was inducted into the Raven Society and received his
M.A., both in May 1917.30 In spite of his successes, Barr would recall many
years later that he had no mentor while he was a student at Virginia. This
differed from Buchanan, “who’d been in [Amherst] College with Meiklejohn
and a personal friend of Meiklejohn’s and had in a funny sense been tutored
by Meiklejohn.” Barr said, “I had no comparable adventure with a lecturer
that I could name.”31
After a stint in the Army Medical Corps during World War I, Barr left for
Balliol College, Oxford where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar from 1919 to
1921. It was at Oxford that he met Scott Buchanan who became his lifelong
friend and colleague. At Oxford, Barr quickly became disillusioned with his
course in literature. At the same time he became fascinated with the depth of
Buchanan’s intellect and it was Buchanan who suggested Barr read history
for the duration of his time at Balliol. He did, and after Oxford, Barr also
studied at the Universities of Paris, where he earned a diploma, and at Ghent.
It was also at this time that he married Gladys Baldwin, known to her friends
as “Oak.”
After time in Paris and a stint as a tutor in Asheville, North Carolina, Barr
endeavored to return to Charlottesville. In planning a trip to Virginia in the
spring of 1924, Barr wrote to Edwin A.Alderman, President of the University:
Aside from the pleasure of greeting you, I am of course anxious to know
whether the History department is to undergo the expansion you spoke
of. This may sound like a very gracelessly direct bid: it is precisely that.
An offer of a berth in that Department at Virginia would receive my
weightiest consideration when I form my next year’s plans. At each
successive return to America from Europe I have been more convinced
that I wished to cast my lot with the State, and if possible with the
University, of Virginia.32
Barr returned to the University of Virginia in 1924 to teach in the School of
History. As an assistant professor, he was one of three faculty members; Dumas
Malone was the associate professor and Richard Heath Dabney was a full
professor.33 Barr taught modern European history, a position he held for the
next dozen years: three as an assistant professor, three as an associate professor,
and six as a full professor starting in 1930 at the age of thirty-three, “to the
fury of some of the faculty, because I was too young for a full professorship.”34
In addition to teaching during the 1924–1936 period that he was at the
University of Virginia, Barr served as the business manager of the Virginia
Quarterly Review, and then from 1930 until 1934, as editor.35 Barr remained
on the history faculty until 1936, when he left with Buchanan for the University
of Chicago.36
Three Professorial Styles

Although Barr and Gooch shared numerous traits in common—former student
leaders, Rhodes Scholars, and a shared love of the University of Virginia to
name a few—the two men were at opposite extremes of the professorial image.
Barr, who was very popular with the students and widely regarded as one of the
best lecturers at the University, was rumpled, “tweedy,” academic, and
outspoken. He had “fabulous flaming red hair” and wore a “knickered flannel
suit.”37 He was eloquent and a good “front man,” “but his lecturing style was
regarded by some as cheap theater. Nevertheless, in the 1930s Barr loved the
University and its sons loved him.
Robert Gooch, by contrast, was handsome, elegant, fastidious, and politically
sawy. Particularly striking was the artificial British accent which Gooch used
after his return from England, and which he continued to affect for the rest of his
life.38 One student from the 1930s, Charles Moran, recalled that Gooch was
widely thought of as a very good teacher and that his argumentative style was
appropriate to his interests in government and law.39 A student of Gooch’s in the
1950s, Staige Blackford, likewise respected him, but also thought his government
and foreign affairs class was dull, and that Gooch “was one of the worst teachers
I ever had.”40 While not as captivating as Barr, Gooch was highly regarded. When
he retired in 1964, accolades named Gooch “the living symbol of the university,”
“the students’ professor,” and “the Virginia man’s Virginia man.”41
Scott Buchanan, by contrast, was often described in more contemplative
and reserved terms, sometimes as melancholic, but also as a man who had an
incredibly sharp mind that made a distinct impression on people. J.Winfree
Smith, who took Buchanan’s course on metaphysics at Virginia in the early
1930s recalled that Buchanan had an “extra-ordinary ability as a teacher. To
some extent this depended on personal qualities very hard to define, such
seemingly accidental things as intonation of the voice or a penetrating look.
Sometimes it depended on a flair for startling paradoxes, sometimes on
deliberate avoidance of the conventional.”42 Another student of Buchanan’s
during the 1935–1936 academic year, L.Harvey Poe, Jr., recalled that
Buchanan’s classes were more like discussion sessions than lectures. Buchanan
would promote discussion by asking questions and then avoid intruding too
much into the discussion, except to continue it on a productive course. Buchanan
believed that one could not make another person learn. Rather, one knew that
learning had occurred when a student exclaimed “I see!” Another pedagogical
distinction was that Buchanan gave only essay exams to his students.43 In spite
of their differences in character all three men pushed relentlessly for the common
goal of intellectual rigor and excellence.
Continuing Academic Atrophy

Jefferson had wanted his institution to be a true university and not a de facto
academy as he believed the other American institutions of higher education
were during his time. As noted earlier, the necessity of engaging “shameful
Latinists” and the “Connecticut tutor” at the start of the university’s history
had belied Jefferson’s hope. One hundred years later many believed Jefferson’s
hope had yet to be realized. A critical article in College Topics, the student
newspaper, stated the university had “such a serene detachment from what is
commonly considered the chief purpose of a university.” What the university
did have was an air “of gentlemanly aloofness, of elaborate negligence in a
beautiful setting. But from the machinery of education proper, not a whir.”44
In 1922 the requirements for the B.A. were revised, but new requirements
alone did not assure either rigorous classes or student achievement.45 In 1931
Gooch attacked the university’s undergraduate program, comparing it to a
“kindergarten or grammar school.”46 Some idea of the approach students took
to their classes is seen in the recollections of Charles Moran, who was a student
in Barr’s 1931 world history course. Moran contends that Barr was more
demanding than most professors because Barr actually enforced certain class-
room rules—rules which illustrate the seriousness, or lack thereof, with which
many Virginia students took their course work. For example, Barr did not allow
students to read newspapers in class if the students could not keep the papers
from rustling. Also, no sleeping was allowed to the point of snoring. This latter
injunction could be a real problem, especially around the time of “Easters,”
the main social event of the Spring, when the students would often be “half-
crocked” in class. Those students who actually worked in class were rewarded.
For example, Barr conferred the William Cabell Reeves Fellowship in History
on Moran, meaning Moran graded student papers and received much welcome
financial assistance during the early years of the Depression.47
The “Special Honors” System

One step made toward increasing the academic quality of the university was the
creation of a system of “Special Honors” that predated the honors proposals made
in the 1935 Virginia Plan. The original provisions for Special Honors at Virginia
were introduced by the Academic Faculty for the 1924–1925 academic year. They
were designed for students “who possess greater ability and application than the
average.” In order to motivate the better students, and to give them “authoritative
recognition of unusual ability and high achievement,” the Special Honors system
established Intermediate and Final Honors. Intermediate Honors were awarded
to students who had no failures and a grade point average of 85 percent or more
in all of their underclassmen courses. Those students who wished to be candidates
for Final Honors had to apply to the new Special Committee on Honors at the end
of their second year of classes and be accepted by the committee. Final Honors
were awarded by the committee solely on the basis of a given student’s
performance on an oral or written special comprehensive exam administered at
the end of their collegiate course work. Although their four-year course work
record was not taken into account in the determination of Final Honors,
upperclassmen candidates for Final Honors were not excused from classes in
their last two years—an important point that would be revised in the 1935 Virginia
Plan. Though small, the Special Honors system established in the 1920s was the
first manifestation of honors work at the University of Virginia.48
Barr’s Developing Convictions

Stringfellow Barr would be one of the members of the committee which revised
the honors requirements and it is instructive to consider his educational thinking
during the time that he was a member of the Virginia faculty. During his years
as a history professor at Virginia in the 1920s and 1930s, Barr was somewhat
influenced by the German historian Oswald Spengler, who proposed in his
monumental Decline of the West, published as two volumes in 1918 and 1923,
that all civilizations are deterministically organic; that is, that they go through
an inalterable process of birth, bloom, and ultimately, decay. Barr recalled that
“I did fall for it when…volume I…first came out…. I lectured on [Spengler],
because I couldn’t lecture on what I should have lectured on ’cause I’d been
lying on my belly reading Spengler in a panic.” Barr later rejected Spengler’s
deterministic view of history, claiming that “Spengler was too dramatic for my
taste really.”49 However, educational declension remained a dominant theme in
Barr’s view of the world. He never wavered from his conviction that the liberal
arts had been displaced by the spread of the elective system that had come,
unfortunately in Barr’s opinion, to dominate American higher education.
Barr’s tenure at the University of Virginia was seminal. Although Buchanan
recorded that he and Barr “had spent long hours in talk about the plight of
American education when we were both Rhodes Scholars at Oxford,” it was
during their time in Charlottesville that Barr first became interested in reforming
undergraduate education by reestablishing the liberal arts as the foundation of
the undergraduate curriculum.50 Barr recorded that:
My teaching had been in large lecture courses, but I got up a section of
the course and read great historical works with them—Herodotus,
Thucydides, Plutarch. I began to see why Scott was hipped on these great
books. I’d read some of these books before, of course, some of them
partly in Greek, but I didn’t really get the point of any of them. I suppose
one never does, it’s all relative—but certainly I didn’t. Slowly Scott got
me to understand why they had such extraordinary effects or had had for
him and Adler and McKeon….51
One student who was chosen by Barr for this special discussion section in the
autumn of 1935 was L.Harvey Poe, Jr. Poe recalled that while the regular students
in Barr’s history class read from a textbook and took a true-false final
examination (for which Buchanan chided Barr), a small group of better students,
hand-picked by Barr, read primary works and discussed them seminar style: an
intellectually exciting and likewise unusual occurrence at Virginia.52 This
evolutionary change in the way Barr thought about education eventually led to
his desire, shared by Buchanan, Gooch, and others to attempt the reformation
of collegiate education at the University of Virginia.
The Appeal of Curricular Reform

During an interview late in life, Stringfellow Barr was asked to recount the
events leading up to the creation of the Virginia Plan in 1934 and 1935. He
replied: “It’s an incoherent story but events were incoherent.” Barr then
explained that, although Virginia “had a system under which [a student] could
get honors,” the program was perceived as being poorly formulated. 53 In
September 1934 Barr had accepted the appointment by the University’s new
president, John Lloyd Newcomb, to serve on a committee with Chairman Robert

Gooch, Scott Buchanan, and others to study Virginia’s honors program and
come up with a better plan that would enable the University to “do more than it
does now for the more favored college student.”54
Barr, Gooch, and Buchanan had all been critical of contemporary
undergraduate education before official committee work on the Virginia Plan
got underway in 1934. Although each had in his own way been interested in
curricular reform for some time, the formation of this committee marked the
formal beginning of the somewhat incoherent story of Barr, Buchanan, Gooch,
and their “Virginia Plan” as it played out at various times at the University of
Virginia, the University of Chicago, and St. John’s College over the next thirty
years.
To appreciate the situation faced by Barr, Buchanan, Gooch and the other
committee members who created the Virginia Plan, one must be reminded
that, in spite of its vaunted beginnings a century earlier, the University of Virginia
was not perceived as being academically distinguished during the early decades
of the twentieth century. For the first seventy-five years of its existence, the
University’s internal governance had been by committee. Thomas Jefferson
had not provided for the office of president, preferring instead to establish the
Board of Visitors as the legal and external authority for university affairs and
leaving routine institutional governance in the hands of a faculty committee
with a rotating chairmanship. In 1904 this system was finally abolished and
while the first president, Edwin A.Alderman, and his successor John
L.Newcomb, had done much to bring the University out of the doldrums, the
institution’s position vis-a-vis the leading American universities was less than
enviable.
The unremarkable academic quality of the University of Virginia in the
1920s had persisted into the 1930s. A 1937 Life Magazine issue devoted to the
American University “as one of the basic institutions of our present-day cultural
heritage” highlighted Virginia’s non-academic reputation:55
Aside from a common eccentricity in not calling a campus a campus,
Virginia and Harvard are not at all alike. Thomas Jefferson, who
founded the University in 1819, wrote that while “nearly every college
and academy in the United States” was copying Harvard in prescribing
rigid courses, he wanted the Virginia student to “come and listen to
whatever he thinks may improve the condition of his mind.” Virginia
still sticks to this broadly gentlemanly attitude which does not breed
or encourage scholars. Harvard’s attitude is just the reverse…. There
is very little of the “collegiate” about Virginia. Its students try to be
cosmopolite gentlemen and they are indisputably among the ablest
college drinkers in the country. Except for its Law School, Virginia
does not enjoy top rank as an educational institute. Good Virginians
and F.F.V.’s invariably attend the University unless they have serious
educational aims. Then they go north. At Virginia, in the lovely town
of Charlottesville, the student can spend a few surpassingly pleasant
years among gentlemen, getting what has been called the “finest
training for convivial and mannerly social intercourse to be found
anywhere in the world.”56
This impression of the social aspect of the university was supported editorially
by the student newspaper, College Topics, which stated that the University of
Virginia, Princeton, and Williams are “generally recognized as the ‘country
club’ colleges of America…. And well may it be said, for the students of these
three take more pains in dress, and the etiquette of play than the students of any
other colleges in the country. But does this detract from the specifications of a
gentleman? It definitely does not.” As for studies, College Topics declared that
Virginia “stands neither highest nor lowest.”57 To the extent that this was a
common perception of the university’s academic stature, President Newcomb’s
interest in improving standards seems warranted.58
It would be incorrect to assume that Virginia had no academic standing
during this time. In a 1935 article Stringfellow Barr wrote that:
Because of its origins and its early conditions, the University of Virginia
has the distinctive character so often found in Europe and so rarely found
in America…. It is a singular fact that as late as the present century it was
possible to speak merely of “the University” in any Southern state and
still be widely understood, and this even after numerous institutions had
grown up throughout the South that would eventually make it necessary
to specify the full title.59
Non-Virginians also held respect for Mr. Jefferson’s University. Frank Aydelotte,
the former president of Swarthmore College, referred to the University of
Virginia as one “of our stronger state institutions.”60 Nevertheless, academic
quality, or the perceived lack thereof, became a motivating concern that
permeated university policy in the mid-1930s.
President Newcomb was interested in improving undergraduate instruction
at all levels. In 1935, the B.A. requirements were revised for the second time
since World War I. 61 While all students might benefit from the new
requirements, Newcomb believed the “more able student” deserved even
better. It was against this backdrop that Newcomb reached out to Gooch and
through him to Barr and Buchanan to develop a better honors program to
challenge Virginia’s most able students. Barr and Buchanan’s mid-1930s
collaboration in Charlottesville, which became so integral to the liberal arts
movement, thus began in part as an attempt to respond to Newcomb’s concern
for the better students. However, the result of the committee’s work—the
Virginia Plan—had roots that ran much deeper than the committee’s work in
Charlottesville in 1934 and 1935.
Propaedeutic Experiences at Oxford

Barr and Buchanan’s conversations with Gooch, Newcomb, and others at
Virginia built upon earlier, albeit less directed, discussions that Barr and
Buchanan had had while at Oxford, and on their subsequent experiences,
especially Buchanan’s time with Adler at the People’s Institute in New York in
the 1920s. Of their first discussions in England, Buchanan wrote that: “[Barr]
and I had spent long hours in talk about the plight of American education when
we were both Rhodes Scholars at Oxford, he from Virginia and I from
Massachusetts ”62
At Oxford, Buchanan had been exposed to the famous arts courses that
comprised the honors school known colloquially as “Greats” or “Ancient
Greats.” Of this course of study Daniel Bell noted that:
The Literae Humaniores, or “Greats,” which in one sense is the inspirer
of the general education ideal, is not simply a reading of classical authors
for the sake of learning about a tradition. “Greats” is itself a specialization
and training in the way to read texts, in order to produce a distinctive
mind. As two Oxford dons characterize the course, perhaps a bit smugly,
“The effect of Literae Humaniores on its students is to develop thought
and speech and a keen and critical intellect. It is deficient in providing
knowledge of the modern world, and history and economics will remain
a closed book unless the student, as often indeed happens, makes himself
well informed by his own efforts and intelligent general reading. But it is
said to produce men who are unrivaled as expositors and judges of any
situation or set of facts placed before them.”63
Former Swarthmore president and Rhodes Scholar Frank Aydelotte wrote in
1944 that in terms of intellectual discipline, Greats had for over a century,
“stood first in the entire university world.” He also argued that while “its
preeminent value is commonly attributed to the superiority of the Greek and
Latin classics as training for the mind and to the severity of the standard which
has prevailed in this School” it could be maintained that Greats “owes as much
of its value to its breadth as to its content.” This contention argued Aydelotte,
explained why the other significant honors school at Oxford was the “Modern
Greats.” Established at the end of World War I, “Modern Greats” was an honors
school of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Aydelotte concluded that “the
success of Modern Greats seems to me to prove the soundness of the theory
on which it was organized….”64 In other words, Aydelotte believed that the
Greats courses at Oxford demonstrated how disciplined independent tutorial
work using the best ancient and modern material, all in preparation for the
final honors examinations, was the preeminent form of education for better
students.65
Mortimer Adler recorded that Buchanan, who was very interested in the
great books approach to education by the time he arrived at the University of
Virginia in 1929, “regarded the ‘great books course’ as a characteristically
American extension of the ‘ancient greats’ and ‘modern greats’ that, in his day
at Oxford, were the main undergraduate programs.”66 Together, Buchanan and
Adler had promoted the great books philosophy during their work together at
the People’s Institute in New York in the 1920s. By 1929, which Buchanan
described as “the year of dispersal for our idea of the liberal arts,” Buchanan
and Adler were ready to try their ideas at other institutions. Adler went to the
University of Chicago and Buchanan to the University of Virginia. Buchanan
later wrote that these “new soils…proved both energizing and hostile” to their
ideas about liberal arts education.67
Buchanan and Charlottesville

Upon arrival at the University of Virginia in 1929, Buchanan took up a position
as associate professor of philosophy.68 Virginia had an interesting assortment
of rich personalities on its faculty at that time; Barr and Buchanan should have
been right at home. As Barr put it:
They were a little eccentric, if you like, a little more like Oxford actually,
in teaching and in what they thought life was about. Scott [Buchanan]
was, I think, genuinely intrigued by Charlottesville. He considered it a
foreign country and acted accordingly and was kind of terribly amused
by it.69
Yet perhaps because of his Congregational New England background, Buchanan
never really took to Virginia, and he quickly became despondent at what he
perceived to be a dearth of intellectual life at the University.70 There were a few
bright spots, especially his renewed friendship with Barr, but to Buchanan
academic declension was everywhere:
Stringfellow Barr and I quickly picked up our conversations where we
had left off [at Oxford,] and the University of Virginia was a fertile field
for participant observation as well as speculation. The college of the
University was being squeezed, exploited, and reduced to the size and
functions of a secondary preparatory school for the graduate schools,
which in turn were losing their professional statuses and becoming
handmaidens to the going concerns of science, technology, and business.
The superficial symptoms of the disease appeared as worries about the
better undergraduate students who were not getting liberal arts training
commensurate with their powers. It was reported that an ad hoc Honors
Course for the better students had been chosen by only two and a half
students per year, one of those statistical monstrosities of computerized

dean’s offices. President Alderman set up a committee to study the problem
and make recommendations. Barr and I were members.71
Notwithstanding his renewed association with Barr, within months of his arrival
in Charlottesville Buchanan despairingly contacted Adler, who had recently
been brought to Hyde Park by Robert Hutchins, himself only a few months into
his tenure as the president of the University of Chicago. Buchanan wrote, “We
are just beginning the second lap of what is an old course, and it feels like
wholesale disillusionment. Faculty, students, landscape, accent, housekeeping,
even leisure, all are flat and unprofitable.”72 At Adler’s urging, Buchanan started
a correspondence with Hutchins in February, 1930. Buchanan wanted a position
at Chicago and after an initial letter of introduction, Buchanan wrote a second
letter to Hutchins in which he stated that:
…for reasons which I confess I don’t completely understand the
discomforts here in Charlottesville seem to be more acute…. It seems
that my interest in Chicago is a comment on Virginia, and that my presence
here is taken to be the only hope for philosophy in Virginia. I fail to
understand this but have to accept it as a fact with all the attendant
discomforts. I can assure you that in a small university town they are
many.73
While claiming that he did not want to rush matters, Buchanan concluded that,
“…I want to do all I can to ease the silly but nonetheless real misery here.”74
It is not particularly clear why Buchanan chose Virginia, other than because
he had an offer to do so and that he would be with his old friend Stringfellow
Barr. To Hutchins he wrote:
On account of various incidents in my moderately wide experience with
universities I have for some time assumed that very little if anything of
importance could be done with them; they should be born (sic) with
fortitude and humor. Hence my decision to come here [to Charlottesville]
where there is as little of a university as there can be and still provide a
living for its members.75
Most likely, Buchanan’s best option in 1929 was to go to Charlottesville. Many
years later, Buchanan recorded that: “…my own sense that the enterprises the
People’s Institute had fostered should be carried on elsewhere; the idea of a
people’s university might well be reintroduced to the conventional university. I
therefore accepted an invitation to join the philosophy department at the
University of Virginia.”76
Regardless of the reasons for his unhappiness, Buchanan did meet Hutchins
in Chicago in March of 1930, ostensibly to discuss Buchanan’s options.
Although employment decisions were “postponed,” Buchanan was quite
pleased with the visit, particularly with their discussion on “a revaluation of

values in academic scholarship.” Once back in Charlottesville, Buchanan wrote
to Hutchins:
I do not mean popularisation of this knowledge by this revaluation but
rather a shift of emphasis and effort away from fact-finding research to a
critical search for “clear and distinct” ideas, as our gang [Adler, Buchanan,
McKeon] calls them. The best example of what I mean is what Mortimer
is doing in law and psychology. This and what little else I have seen of it,
particularly in England, have been done under the university-community
conditions that you would like to see at Chicago, but they have always
seemed to involve “sweating” and underpaying the teacher and researcher.
I think it a sound scheme, and money may be able to solve the difficulties.
I hope it does….
I have to-day been telling my best friend here about the project for
[Adler’s proposed] School of Philosophical Studies. At the end of the
conversation [Barr] said that this Chicago business, especially my trip,
was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in years; I had led
up to the Philosophical Studies as a climax. I told him about them in
terms of the lectures on Scientific Apologetics that Mortimer and I have
been giving in New York, how they had involved saying things about
science that no scientist would say, and things about religion that no
theologian would say, and finally forcing a formal statement of both that
would completely re-organise all subject matters on a basis similar to the
medieval Summa’s. I went on to say that such a statement would turn all
academic political argument into a discussion of intellectual subject
matters. I apparently got quite eloquent; I repeat it for your amusement. I
seem to be more serious than I supposed about this; I believe the success
of your whole scheme depends on the results of this, and the doing of it
will be most exciting for whoever does it. It would be like the rediscovery
of the classics leading to the renaissance in Europe.77
With a clear hope in continuing their Chicago-Virginia discussions, Buchanan
concluded: “Let me remind you that the Jeffersonian architecture and a very
seductive countryside are waiting for you to come and see them; with them
also I and my friend, Barr, who ‘belongs’.”78
Buchanan also wanted to bring Richard McKeon, then at Columbia, and
Mortimer Adler, then at Chicago, to Charlottesville and he suggested to them
that he would ask the chairman of the Philosophy Department, Albert Balz, to
invite them to the University. Once there, they could work together on their
liberal arts philosophy.79 Such considerations, however, were soon postponed.
Buchanan spent the 1931–32 academic year at Cambridge University
researching the mathematician George Boole. From this work, Buchanan
published a small book, entitled Symbolic Distance: “In which the bridge
between the poetry of the trivium and the mathematics of the quadrivium was
presented as a theory of measurement and fiction.” Buchanan believed that “it
would be through some such understanding that the modern liberal arts and
sciences could bring together the modern literatures and sciences into intelligible
and teaching order.”80
When his time in England was drawing to a close, Buchanan wrote to Adler,
“When I go back, I shall install the liberal arts in the school of philosophy or in
a new honors school. Will you come to Virginia?”81 Although they remained at
Chicago and Columbia, Adler and McKeon both visited Virginia several times
during Buchanan’s years there as professor (1929–1936), sometimes to give
formal lectures and always to continue their philosophical discussions.82 Adler
likewise wanted Buchanan and Barr to come to Chicago. In June 1931 they
went to Chicago to act as external examiners for the great books seminar led
by Adler and Hutchins. There they engaged each student in the seminar in a
half-hour oral examination.83
President Newcomb and Curricular Reform

Upon his return from Cambridge in 1932, Buchanan reengaged the nascent
discussion of curricular reform in Charlottesville:
When I returned from England, the battles of the liberal arts at Chicago
and Virginia had grown to sieges and campaigns. At Chicago there were
hardy recruits to the new investigations and construction that Adler was
leading…. The emphasis at Chicago was on the subject matters of literature
and the humanities, including philosophy. I decided that I would balance
this emphasis by attending courses in mathematics and physics taught by
friends who were sympathetic to my questions. We kept the two
universities in communication by exchanging lecturers who dealt mainly
with the technical doctrines of symbols in logic and in mathematics, a
kind of counter-doctrine to the growing movements of semantics, logical
positivism, and pragmatism.84
Buchanan also continued his teaching in the philosophy department. Barr
recorded that, “Buchanan taught only small classes and he taught these in the
Socratic manner that had exerted such curious power at Balliol. He became
something of a legend among students, although few of them knew him.”85
A significant event at Virginia during this period was the death of Edwin
Anderson Alderman, the first president of the university, in April 1931. John
Lloyd Newcomb, who had been Alderman’s assistant since 1926, was appointed
acting president by the Board of Visitors. One of the candidates for the office
was Barr, but in October 1933 the Board, after a long and drawn out
consideration of other candidates, finally decided to appoint Newcomb as
president.86
As noted at the beginning of this chapter, Newcomb believed improvements

in the curriculum were necessary, no doubt out of a sincere desire to promote
academic quality at the university. But Newcomb was not predisposed to
consider radical changes in the curriculum. Virginius Dabney, in his history of
the University of Virginia, recorded that the Student Senate passed a resolution
supporting Newcomb as Alderman’s successor because Newcomb, said the
Senate, would not “wish to foist on Virginia any experimental schemes or
ultramodern theories of education.” Dabney argued that: “[Newcomb] was a
man who could be counted on not to ‘rock the boat;’ his views were well
known. Most members of the faculty were conservative, in contrast to many
professors in later years, and they preferred a man who would move ahead in
the old grooves to one who might go ‘wenching after strange gods.’”87
In spite of Newcomb’s disposition, Buchanan had promising discussions
with him about possible curricular reforms for the better students. In March
1934, six months before President Newcomb actually appointed the committee
that eventually drafted the Virginia Plan, Buchanan wrote Adler in Chicago
that Newcomb was “very interested in my plan for general honors.” 88
Buchanan’s “plan” at this point was still in the formative stages. It would not
be set to paper until the honors committee created by Newcomb several months
later eventually included it as one of the two schemes in the Virginia Plan.
Buchanan, however, was also upset because Newcomb, perhaps true to his
disposition, had expressed reservations to Barr about Buchanan’s nascent plans.
As Buchanan understood Newcomb, the problem was that “the requirements I
had made in mathematics would scare the good students away and wreck the
whole scheme. You see [Newcomb] objects to the quadrivium being an
important part of the Liberal Arts, too. He must be an Aristotelian, but he
didn’t dare tell me.”89 Barr recalled that:
…after Newcomb got in, Scott [Buchanan] was more and more
unhappy…with the state of the School of Philosophy…. and he talked
with Bob Gooch and me, and…. I don’t know who succeeded…. I think
Bobby probably succeeded in getting Newcomb to appoint that committee
[on Honors Courses],and appointed him chairman.”90
Thus it was most likely Buchanan who first prompted Newcomb to consider
changes in the existing honors program at Virginia and it was probably Robert
Gooch who actually precipitated action by the president.
In short, Newcomb’s decision to appoint a committee to consider curricular
reform in September 1934 did not initiate the 1930s discussions regarding
liberal education at Virginia; Barr, Buchanan, and Gooch had been discussing
the issues for some time.91 But the creation of the Gooch Committee, officially
known as the Committee on Honors Courses, and which drafted the Virginia
Plan, was a milestone event, not only at the University of Virginia, but in the
liberal arts movement overall. As noted in Chapter 1, Erskine’s great books
course at Columbia and Hutchins and Adler’s great books course at Chicago
preceded the 1935 Virginia Plan. In crafting their curricular proposal, the
members of the Virginia Committee on Honors Courses drew on these courses,
the existing Special Honors program at Virginia, and their own experiences.
The committee members ameliorated these precursors and packaged them into
an integrated whole, which they called the “Virginia Plan.” As will be seen, the
Virginia Plan informed, and thus in a very real sense made possible, the
curricular revolutions which followed at Chicago in the later 1930s and the
1940s, at St. John’s in 1937, and the less radical curricular innovations at the
University of Virginia, which likewise started in 1937.
Newcomb Appoints the “Gooch” Committee on Honors Courses

In his September 15, 1934 letter to Robert Gooch, President Newcomb stated
that:
I am very anxious to have a committee of the faculty study the whole
question of Honors Courses in the University of Virginia. While the
American State University must in my judgment never lose sight of the
necessary training for the average student, I think the University of Virginia
should do more than it does now for the more favored college student….
In any event, I should like to have the benefit of the judgment of a
representative committee of our faculty on the whole subject of Honors
Courses in the University.92
Gooch, who because of the discussions that he, Barr, and Buchanan had already
had with Newcomb on the subject of honors work, was probably fully aware that
such a letter was coming. Gooch replied to Newcomb that he was appreciative of
Newcomb’s confidence in him, that he was pleased with “the representative
character of the members you [Newcomb] have chosen,” and of his “desire and
hope that the work of the committee shall be serious, intelligent, and fruitful.”93
No longer merely a topic of discussion on Grounds, the creation of the
Committee on Honors Courses meant that formal work on what became the
Virginia Plan had begun. Although the Committee had six members, the three
Rhodes Scholars—Barr, Buchanan, and Gooch—dominated its work and wrote
its recommendations. Of Gooch’s Honors Committee, Barr recalled that “we
worked like hell. We met once every week or fortnight or something for a lot
of months.”94
Buchanan, Gooch, and Their Competing Proposals

The committee worked with several different ideas. All members agreed that
the “Special Honors” program, which had been in existence at Virginia since
1924, was not working and needed to be overhauled. But the committee members
found it difficult to agree on much else at first. Scott Buchanan wanted a whole
new approach to honors work. He proposed the establishment of an honors

college within the regular College of Arts and Sciences. The honors students in
this new college would be exempt from the regular curricular requirements and
course work. Instead they would be required to take a completely prescribed
program of study that utilized seminars, lectures, and the great books of the
Western tradition to teach the liberal arts. Unlike the existing great books courses
at Columbia and Chicago, Buchanan proposed that the Virginia program would
include mathematical and scientific classics in addition to the great literary
works. Buchanan also proposed that the students in the honors program would
take a special laboratory class in which they would reproduce the momentous
experiments of Western science, starting with those of the ancient Greeks. Final
comprehensive examinations, both written and oral, would be administered at
the end of the course, and “be given with as much dignity and severity as the
group can stand.”95
Robert Gooch, on the other hand, was particularly interested in establishing
“Oxbridge”–style tutorial work for honors students. In Gooch’s conception of
honors work, which was very similar in substance to what he had experienced
as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, the select students would have a workload in
excess of that required of the average student, but also be exempt from all
regular and departmental course requirements. Honors students would have
weekly meetings with their tutors, write papers or conduct experiments, and at
the end of their work, take oral and written final comprehensive exams on
whatever subject they had been “reading,” to use the Oxford parlance. This
honors work, overseen by the Committee on Honors Courses, would take place
within the existing structure of the academic departments of the College of
Arts and Sciences and thus was more compatible with the last two years of
conventional college work when students had an academic major.
Because Gooch’s proposal lent itself better to the upperclass years, and
Buchanan’s proposal, with its emphasis on breadth, seemed especially relevant
to the underclass years, the committee members eventually conceived of their
overall plan as encompassing both proposals, but such a consensus did not come
easily. Barr later recalled that Gooch, “unfortunately” in Barr’s opinion, was
political, that is, Gooch believed that “you mustn’t do this because you would
offend the sociologist, you mustn’t do that because, and so on.”96 Yet because of
his more accommodating stance, Gooch believed his proposal would work within
the existing structure of the college far better than Buchanan’s proposal. Gooch’s
interest in compromise—his willingness to design an honors program that could
work within the status quo without too much disruption—would also increase
the chance of the committee’s eventual proposal actually being adopted by the
faculty. Buchanan however, as Barr recalled, took a position at “just the extreme
opposite” of Gooch. Buchanan wanted no accommodation with the status quo if
the status quo was not worth preserving. Buchanan wanted first to figure out
“what we must do” and only afterward was Buchanan willing to “talk about
compromises….” As Barr put it, Buchanan was of the opinion that the committee
should “find out what it is you’ve got to compromise, is it worth doing [?]”97
The Committee’s work continued into 1935. Both Gooch and Buchanan
continued to develop their proposals. In a statement on the “Special Honors”
program that had existed at Virginia since 1924, Gooch stated: “The question
why work in Final Honors at the University of Virginia has not been a success
seems to me clearly to be a leading question, inasmuch as it implies that Final
Honors work really exists. I consider this contrary to fact.” Gooch felt the crux
of the problem resulted from the fact that special honors upperclassmen had
course requirements in their major department. As Gooch put it: “I see no
reason for believing that a system in which the attempt is made to have the
same student do some Honors work and some non-Honors work can possibly
succeed.”98 Accordingly, Gooch was steadfast in his opinion that honors tutorial
work, at least in the upperclass years, should prohibit any required course
work. As Barr later stated, Gooch “…had been a Rhodes Scholar and was very
much an advocate of the freedom that the Oxford undergraduate has for study
on his own.”99
Buchanan, however, was not particularly enthusiastic about the
upperclassman “Oxbridge”-style tutorial plan promoted by Gooch. Barr
recollected: “Of course, Scott [Buchanan] would say, ‘[Upperclassmen] aren’t
ready for a specialty. They’ve got no education and they’re not getting it at
present.’”100 Instead, Buchanan believed that his great books scheme would
introduce the students to the liberal arts in a way that had been lost in the
fragmented world of the research university and its compartmentalized academic
disciplines.101 Only a program that endeavored to use all of the liberal arts of
the trivium and quadrivium could make clear the unity of knowledge sought
by the liberal artists. Buchanan wrote:
The educational principle underlying the [great books] scheme might be

called the principle of mutually implicated abilities and mutually
supporting disciplines. The principle can be stated as follows: balanced
training in two or more mutually implicated abilities increases the
disciplinary effect in each ability over and above the results of any
specialized training in single abilities…. It follows from this principle
that the omission of a supporting discipline will tend to vitiate and nullify
the effects of any given discipline. This result may be regretted but
accepted as inevitable in the case of second-rate minds and those who
come to college in order to earn a living or climb a professional ladder; it
cannot be accepted without protest for the best minds. It is on this ground
that this scheme has insisted on the wholeness and balance in the well-
rounded humane disciplines of both ancient and modern classics, and
has chosen to subordinate the present emphasis on free choice and
intensive specialization, which already have their places in secondary
education and the graduate schools. The width and difficulty of the course
demands, therefore, the ability to balance and integrate disciplines and
subject-matters. Facilitation is sought in the mutual intelligibilities and
interdependencies of the classics, rather than in the evanescent and
specious trainings that we now hypocritically expect in our students. It
seems that this course in principle demands no more than the equipment
of the average student, and that therefore the determination of modes of
selection of the better students can be left to the exigencies of
administrative policy as this is dictated by circumstances.102
Clearly, Buchanan’s scheme was promoting first and foremost a particular
educational philosophy—one which supported the idea of the unity of
knowledge and which argued that apprehending that unity had to precede any
specialized study.
With its proposed college within the college, Buchanan’s honors scheme
was far more ambitious than Gooch’s and this made it more difficult for
Buchanan to get other committee members, and later the college faculty, to
accept his proposals. While some committee members probably never really
understood what Buchanan was arguing, he did make enough headway that
the committee began to envision using both schemes together. Many years
later Barr stated that, in the course of the committee’s deliberations, what
Buchanan had really come up with was “a kind of minute St. John’s operation”
while Gooch “really wanted to imitate Oxford.”103
As the deliberations of the Committee on Honors Courses wore on,
Buchanan continued to refine his proposal and the book list that went with it.
The specifics of Gooch’s scheme also needed further consideration. One or
more of the committee members produced a document titled “Tentative
Suggestions to Serve as Possible Basis of Discussion” to continue moving the
process along. The “Tentative Suggestions” were a set of procedural proposals
designed to make Gooch’s scheme more specific. In the document it was
noted that the committee’s overall work was based on two assumptions. The
first was that since they constituted the Committee on Honors Courses (“the
Gooch Committee”), they understood their charge to be the creation of an
honors program. Accordingly, “there must be a certain number of specially
selected students” for such a program. They were not attempting to reform
the entire college. Rather, they had adhered to President Newcomb’s letter
that had established the committee in September 1934 in which he had said,
as the “Tentative Suggestions” noted: “I think the University of Virginia should
do more than it does now for the more favored college student.”104 That being
said, in the document the author or authors suggested that: “The expression
‘Honors’ might perhaps well be abolished. It seems to serve no indispensable
purpose and is perhaps in some conflict with American traditional
terminology.” Instead, “An institution called ‘The President’s List,’ analagous
(sic) to the various Deans’ Lists, might well be established. On this list would
be students chosen toward the end of their second year (and possibly third)
from among distinguished students who have completed all their required
work.”105
The second assumption noted in the document was that: “There should be
established a central University authority, representative of the University in
its corporate and impersonal aspect. This authority would in general be
responsible for establishing and maintaining standards for students on the
President’s List. It might be called ‘The President’s List Authority’ (P.L.A.).”106
With these two broad assumptions in mind, the author or authors of the
“Tentative Suggestions” document proceeded to outline some specifics
regarding the students named to the proposed President’s List. Students on the
President’s List were to have the following privileges:
(1) To become candidates for the Bachelor’s Degree with the
President’s Diploma. (If successful, they might receive their
degrees at Finals from the Rector of the Board of Visitors upon
presentation by the President of the University.)
(2) To be exempt from courses of the regular curriculum.
(3) To attend any classes of the regular curriculum without
obligation to take quizzes, examinations, et cetera. (In any
case, no class grades would determine in any way a candidate’s
final standing.)
(4) To pursue with relative independence a program of studies
approved by the P.L.A.
(5) To receive direction and assistance in their studies adequate to
their individual cases, as arranged by the P.L.A.
(6) To possess membership in the Colonnade Club.
(7) To have at their disposal properly equipped, quiet quarters.
Likewise, the President’s List Authority was to have the following powers and
duties:
(1) To establish the President’s List.
(2) To arrange for the formulation of programs of study, with
bibliography, syllabus, et cetera.
(3) To approve programs which guarantee study at least equal in
quantity to that of programs for the last two years under the
regular curriculum and which offer the possibility of doing
work of a quality warranting award of the Degree with the
President’s Diploma.
(4) To arrange satisfactory direction and instruction for students
on the President’s List.
(5) To make regulations concerning residence for students on the
President’s List.
(6) To arrange final written and oral examinations for determining

the degree of success with which students on the President’s
List have completed their studies.
(7) To recommend recipients of the Degree with the President’s
Diploma.
(8) To recommend students on the President’s List as recipients of
the ordinary Degree.
(9) To recommend the removal of students from the President’s
List and to determine the credit to which such students should
be entitled in the regular curriculum.107
With these further considerations laid out, the overall Virginia Plan began for
the first time to take concrete form. Although he had initially been skeptical of
Buchanan’s proposal, Barr eventually came to see considerable merit in the
plans submitted by both Buchanan and Gooch. In a paper submitted to his fellow
committee members, Barr stated that “each [proposal] seems to me infinitely
preferable to what is now being done here as Honors Work.” Because of this,
Barr wrote to the other committee members that:
I therefore urge the recommendation by this committee of both plans, to

be used at different stages of college work. I shall continue to urge this
unless somebody can submit a third plan that is better, or can convince
me that Buchanan’s and Gooch’s plans cannot exist together in the same
college, or that one would indisputably work better than the other.108
Barr believed that both schemes held promise and that it was not clear which
would yield better results. He was interested in Buchanan’s scheme because its
statement of “mutually implicated abilities” was a statement of the unity of
knowledge, “without which any general education becomes a farce.” Barr
thought the Buchanan’s concern about Gooch’s scheme—that it would
inevitably lead to premature specialization—was legitimate. However, he also
believed that: “Gooch’s scheme recommends itself as being far superior to our
present Honors Work, and as capable of being better still if the student had first
passed through the discipline Buchanan has outlined.”109
Eventually the members of the Committee on Honors were unanimously
agreed. They would recommend Buchanan and Gooch’s schemes as two
complimentary parts of a whole: the “Virginia Plan.” During the first two years
of college, honors students would follow Buchanan’s honors great books
scheme, and in the last two years, Gooch’s honors tutorial scheme. Barr
anticipated a difficult fight with the faculty, but also believed that “the
Committee will waste its time if it seeks for a scheme against which no
objections can be raised.” Indeed, the only way to avoid objections, said Barr,
was to create a scheme “that did not merit objections.” But Barr took comfort
in his belief that “President [Newcomb] appears to me ready to finance any

scheme we can persuade him is worth it.”110
The end result of the committee’s work—the Virginia Plan—was an honors
program unique in American higher education. The Virginia Plan (also
sometimes called the “Virginia Report”) called for prescribed great books
seminars for select underclassmen and “Oxbridge”-style honors tutorials for
select upperclassmen. Barr later recalled of the committee’s work that:
what came up, the Virginia Report, was a kind of first esquisse of what
happened at Annapolis. It was the nearest to it of anything I know. It’s
true that [the] Columbia University Colloquium in the ‘twenties had a
good deal of St. Johnsish stuff in it, but the big contribution that Buchanan
made was insisting on mathematics and science…. So we met a long
time, six or eight of us, and came up with the Virginia Report….111
CHAPTER 3
The Virginia Plan
and Its Reception at Virginia
“St. John’s For Two Years, Oxford For Two”
—Stringfellow Barr
The Virginia Plan

The Report of Gooch’s Committee on Honors Courses
The Virginia Plan consisted of three sections. The first was an overview and
condemnation of American collegiate education. The second section—the first
half of the proposed remedy—was the underclassmen great books scheme.1
The third section—the other half of the proposed remedy—was an amelioration
of the upperclassmen Final Honors special program which already existed in a
weaker form at Virginia. Barr recalled:
The “Virginia Report” that emerged consisted of three parts. The first,
which I wrote, was an acid assessment of the intellectual bankruptcy of
the liberal arts in American “liberal arts” education. The second part,
which Buchanan wrote, provided an all-required course that drew on the
experiences of both the Columbia Colloquium and the adult seminars of
the People’s Institute. But the reading list differed drastically from that
of the Colloquium. About half the books were mathematical or scientific.
The list reflected the title of his Poetry and Mathematics and the
connection between these two modes of thought and expression; between
the medieval trivium and quadrivium that he and Adler and McKeon had
argued about in the days of his seminars for the People’s Institute; between,
if you like, what C.P.Snow would many years later call The Two Cultures.
The third part of the Virginia Report, written by R.K.Gooch, another
former Rhodes Scholar, provided for a continuation and improvement of
independent reading in the third and fourth years under a volunteer tutor
of sorts.2
Late in his life, Barr stated: “I think…things like the Virginia Plan, you can’t
write in a sentence or two and then maybe a footnote—see Appendix Two, or
something and have all those as part of the documentation.” Instead Barr argued
that “the Virginia Plan deserves to be where people can inspect it.”3 The Virginia
Plan follows below in its entirety as it was originally submitted to President
John Newcomb in November, 1935.
69
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON HONORS COURSES

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY
In a letter dated September 15, 1934, the president appointed a committee
consisting of R.K.Gooch, Chairman, J.J.Luck, A.F.Benton, Scott Buchanan,
F.S.Barr, and G.O.Ferguson, ex officio, who were to give their judgment “on
the whole subject of honors courses in the University.” In that letter, the President
also wrote: “I think the University of Virginia should do more than it does now
for the more favored college student.” The committee has met almost weekly
for a period of nearly six months and now wishes to lay before the president the
conclusions it has reached.
It has seemed wise to the committee to ask itself first what is wrong with
the present system that it should be considered inadequate for the better type
of undergraduate. The committee offers the following diagnosis, which it
believes will be recognizable to many who teach and to many who learn. College
education has gotten itself into a vicious circle. The professor recognizes that
neither the lectures he gives nor the text books he assigns for study are worthy
of his ablest students. But the professor feels that, in view of the apparent
difficulty with which most of his students learn what is now assigned to them,
no real improvement is possible without much better human material to work
with. However, given the financial crisis in our educational institutions, there
seems little chance of excluding from admission to the college, or of sending
home after they have shown deficiencies, the very undergraduates whose
presence now drags down college courses. The able student, on his part feels—
and is very vocal in expressing that feeling—that many of the lectures now
given are not worth listening to and that the textbooks assigned are not worthy
of his serious study. In his more charitable moods he recognizes that, given the
present student body, its lack of sound preparation for work on a college level
and its lack of any real seriousness of purpose, the professor is not much to
blame. Observing this low morale on the part of both professor and student
alike, the publishers have done their best to supply increasingly “easy” texts,
more and more derivative, oblique, and irrelevant to the real subject at hand.
The selfrespecting professor has consoled himself with research, justifying his
lectures as a means of subsidizing such research. Or he has found consolation
in graduate courses, in which “real work” may be attempted, if only because
the graduate student has professional and largely economic reasons for
cooperating. The able undergraduate has turned to the university’s “sideshows,”
that is to athletics and other “activities,” in an effort to find an interest and
even to secure discipline which he despairs of finding in the classroom. Or he
undertakes serious reading of his own, perhaps with a group of his fellow
students, perhaps with the friendly if casual advice of a professor. He comes to
look on the strictly curricular exercises of the university as interruptions that
The Virginia Plan and Its Reception at Virginia • 71
must be borne patiently but which he quite sees through, which he knows his
professor sees through, and which he knows his professor knows the student
sees through. Under such conditions, professor and student come to substitute
social courtesy and mutual tolerance for the rigors of intellectual cooperation.
The above diagnosis is purposely stated in black terms. Obviously it cannot
apply to all professors, to all able students, or to all undergraduate courses in
equal degree. But the committee believes that it does portray a nemesis which
threatens every college course given under present conditions. In these
circumstances the committee is convinced that some measure of segregation
for the able student is imperative if he is to be freed from the inappropriate
devices of mass education. Such segregation may obviously be achieved by
either of two methods. On the one hand, the abler undergraduate may be freed
during his last two years from the routine of courses, quizzes, and term
examinations, and allowed to master a subject under the general supervision
of one of the Schools in the College. On the other hand, a small group of
picked students might be enrolled in a “college within a college” and the best
curriculum the faculty can devise might be provided to them.
The committee on honors courses proposes two definite schemes, designed
respectively to apply these two methods. It recommends that these two schemes
be considered as supplementary to each other. Appendix A of this report outlines
one of these schemes, to be applied to the first two years of college residence.
It provides a basic general education, to be secured in a college within the
college. Appendix B outlines the other, to be applied during the last two years
of college when the student can best be freed from course requirements in
order to master the field of his choice.
The committee is convinced that the first two years of the regular curriculum
are not themselves likely, under present social and economic conditions, to
supply the unusual student with the opportunities which he deserves. It proposes,
therefore, that a small group of such students should be furnished with a college
within the college and the best possible conditions for securing a liberal
education. It proposes that a small corps of instructors be assigned to this group
and freed of all other academic duties.
The committee assumes that with “good” instructors and “good” students
the best possible subject matter ought to be provided, a subject matter which
assures the student a liberal education and general culture. It is the committee’s
considered judgment, based on long discussion, that the subject matter of a
liberal education at this level consists of a selected list of the greatest classics
of our cultural tradition, from the Greeks to the moderns; and that these classics
should be the highest achievements, on the one hand, in languages and
literature, and, on the other, in mathematics and the sciences. Such classics
should be read in their entirety and the maximum possible understanding
achieved. The goal to be aimed at would be the comprehension of the main
elements of Occidental thought. The scheme recognizes that such classics
have stood the test of time, as permanently significant embodiments of our

cultural inheritance. It recognizes that to live in our civilization at all requires
some understanding of them, although that understanding under the present
system is meagre, erroneous, and circuitous in origin. It assumes that the
matters treated in these books ought therefore to be faced, and that they ought
to be faced, not indirectly through “written-down” textbooks, but directly,
through the books themselves, books which have been recognized generation
after generation as containing the clearest and most forceful statements
available, of just such matters. It assumes that a properly disciplined study of
such books would therefore be a more formative and more liberalizing
discipline and therefore a sounder basis for third and fourth-year college
work—or indeed for wise living—than any curriculum under the present
system. The committee feels that this scheme of studying our literary and
mathematical classics is indeed “radical” in the etymological sense of that
word, but that it is also the most conservative, most direct and most safe
solution of a problem that has been dealt with long enough in ways that were
“progressive,” indirect and dangerous. The committee knows of no better
method than this one of furnishing a student with a liberal education, and
believes that the inherent practical difficulties in the scheme are exciting
problems that face any college. Although reading courses have been used to
supplement the regular course curriculum at both Columbia and Chicago, the
scheme as a whole, as outlined in Appendix A is to the best of the committee’s
knowledge basically different from any discipline applied in our times; but
the committee feels that this is a challenge and not a condemnation.
It follows that if the scheme in Appendix A with its choice of books, is
adopted, then the subject matter may be allowed, so to speak, to dictate the
choice of both instructors and students. This is theoretically what happens in
college today, where men capable of teaching the required students are engaged
as professors and where students capable and desirous of engaging in such
studies are enrolled. Clearly, in this case, the instructors must be men interested
in guiding first-rate students in securing a liberal education under favorable
conditions. They must be prepared, for the time being, to subordinate their
“professional” ambitions and their status as specialists to the real purpose and
function of the group they are teaching. Similarly, the most relevant test of a
student’s probable fitness to pursue such studies for his first two college years
would be his desire to do so; although the instructor should certainly be
empowered to pick the apparently best applicants by the use of whatever
standards or tests seemed applicable.
The committee feels that it is absolutely essential to the scheme of general
honors outlined in Appendix A that both the literary and the mathematical
sides be included, since both sides are integral to the cultural whole which the
course is intended to pass on and to the equipment for effective thinking which
the course aims to supply. It feels, moreover, that our college students are
intellectually too immature to be allowed to blackball whole segments of a

liberal education in the name of special interests; and that when they are allowed
to do so, vocational specialization replaces automatically the goal of a liberal
education. The committee feels that the two aspects of occidental thought are
mutually implicated, and that this mutual implication is regularly recognized.
It is recognized every time an “orientation course” is launched, in an effort to
patch up a system that is based on second-rate and derivative subject matters.
During the last two years of college the exceptional student should be freed
from routine course requirements, under the provisions outlined in Appendix
B. These provisions are, of course, only a development of the existing honors
arrangements including improvements which the committee regards as basic
and essential. Whatever detailed steps may be necessitated may be left largely
to the individual School to work out in cooperation with some central authority.
Such provisions would certainly, in the hands of a good School, substitute a
relatively thorough mastery of one field of knowledge for course-smatterings.
They would place responsibility for learning more definitely than it now is, on
the student himself, where it belongs. It is imperative, however, that the
individual School, in setting up its program of honors work, bear in mind that
the objective in view is a liberal education and not a species of premature
graduate work.
It is presumably clear from the forgoing consideration that these two schemes
are recommended as an integral whole, calculated on the one hand to lay sound
foundations for a developed understanding of our intellectual traditions, and on
the other to permit the student to follow in his maturer years his special bent.
Nevertheless, in view of the fact that Appendix A calls for only twenty students,
and in view of the fact that several times that number are capable of profiting by
greater opportunities than they are now furnished, the committee recommends
that students who, in the eyes of competent authority, are qualified to spend their
last two years under the provisions of Appendix B, be allowed to do so, whether
or not they have undergone the discipline outlined in Appendix A.
R.K.Gooch, Chairman
March 1935
Attached: Appendix A,
Appendix B.
APPENDIX A
The Proposed Course in General Honors
This course has been devised to bring whatever is known of the European
tradition of liberal education to bear on the education of the best minds in the
University of Virginia. It is, therefore, in order to quote Aristotle on the ends

and means of education. He says that the aim of liberal education is the
production of the intellectual virtues, and that they are five in number, as follows:
1. Art, which is the state of a capacity to make changeable things,

involving a true course of reasoning.
2. Practical Wisdom. which is a true and reasoned state of the capacity
to act with regard to human goods, involving opinions.
3. Scientific Knowledge, which is the state of the capacity to demonstrate
by induction and syllogism, involving knowledge of the eternal and
the necessary.
4. Intuitive Reason, which is the state of a capacity to grasp first
principles.
5. Philosophical Wisdom. which is intuitive reason and scientific
knowledge of things highest by nature.
The means invented by the Greeks, and used and improved during the
following twenty centuries are the Liberal Arts. These are seven in number
and divided into two groups, called respectively the trivium and the
quadrivium, as follows:
Trivium
Grammar, the art and science of concrete things as they are used in mediums of
expression.
Rhetoric. the art and science of applying such notations to things both concrete
and abstract for practical and theoretical ends.
Logic, the art and science of discovering and applying abstract forms.
Quadrivium
Arithmetic and Geometry, the mathematical arts and sciences that correspond
to grammar in the trivium.
Music, the art and science that deals with applied mathematics in all the natural
sciences.
Astronomy. the art and science that deals with proportions, propositions, and
proofs, including mathematical logic.
It has been the aim in the construction of this scheme to detect the principles
in this formulation of liberal education and to find the best subjectmatter
that is available for passing on the tradition. These materials have been
found in their highest form in the literary and scientific classics of Europe.
Some of these classics are clear and effective expositions of the principles
of the liberal arts; all of them are products of the practice of the liberal
arts; all of them are fine exemplary materials for analysis and practice, and
many are outstanding models for imitation. They are crystallizations of the
experience of the race, reminiscent of the past, clarifying for any present
time, and they project the unchanging problems on the future. They are
eminently formative studies.
It will be noted that the division of the liberal arts dictates a division in the
subject-matter along the lines of language and literature on the one hand and
of mathematics and science on the other. This division will appear in the scheme
that follows, and the parts are understood as complementary parts of a single
disciplinary whole.
Program of Instruction
All instruction will be based on the reading, analysis, interpretation, criticism,
imitation, and discussion of the books in the following list:
1. Expository for Language and Literature

Plato: Cratylus, Republic, Sophist
Aristotle: Organon, Poetics
Horace: Ars Poetica
Augustine: De Musica
Bonaventura: The Reduction of the Arts to Theology
Thomas: Summa Theologica, Part I
Locke: Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Hume: Treatise of Human Nature
Kant: Critique of Pure Reason
Goethe: Dichtung und Wahrheit
Coleridge: Biographia Literaria
2. Expository for Mathematics and Science

Plato: Timaeus
Euclid: Elements
Apollonius: Conics
Galileo: Two New Sciences
Descartes: Geometrie
Newton: Principia
Leibniz: Mathematical papers
Gauss: Mathematical papers
Galois et al: Group Theory
Boole: Laws of Thought
Cantor: Tansfinite Numbers
Poincare: Science and Hypothesis
Hilbert: Foundations of Geometry
3. Exemplary Models in Language and Literature

Homer: Iliad and Odyssey
Aeschylus: Oresteia
Herodotus: History
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian Wars
Aristophanes: Frogs, Clouds, Birds
Plutarch: Lives (selected)
Dante: Divine Comedy
Francis Bacon: Novum Organum
Montaigne: Essays
Cervantes: Don Quixote
Shakespeare: Hamlet, King Lear
Milton: Paradise Lost
Fielding: Tom Jones
Calvin: Institutes
Rousseau: Social Contract
Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Marx: Capital
Flaubert: Madame Bovary
Dostoevski: Crime and Punishment
Tolstoi: War and Peace
James: Principles of Psychology
4. Exemplary Models in Mathematics and Science

Nicomachus: Introduction to Arithmetic
Aristarchus: On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon
Galen: On the Natural Faculties
Ptolemy: Almagest
Copernicus: De Revolutionibus
Kepler: Epitome of Astronomy
Lavoisier: Elements de Chimie
Dalton: A New System of Chemical Philosophy
Darwin: Origin of Species
Barnard: Introduction to Experimental Medicine
Faraday: Experimental Researches in Electricity
Joule: Scientific Papers
Maxwell: Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
Peacock: Algebra
Hamilton: Quaternions
Riemann: The Hypothesis of Geometry
Lobachevski: Theory of Parallels
Veblen & Young: Projective Geometry
5. Materials for Analysis and Practice

Literature: Science:
Old Testament Hippocrates
Sophocles Lucretius
Euripides Archimedes
Lucian Leonardo
Virgil Harvey
Cicero Gilbert
Ovid Boyle
Marcus Aurelius Clifford
Plotinus Ostwald
New Testament Galton
Volsunga Saga Mendel
Song of Roland
Chaucer
Machiavelli
Erasmus
More
Rabelais
Grotius
Corneille
Molière
Spinoza
Racine
Swift
Voltaire
Malthus
Hegel
Schopenhauer
Balzac
Zola
Thackeray
Dickens
Ibsen
Machinery of Instruction
1. Meetings of the whole class. All members of the class will meet once a
week for discussion of reading with two instructors in charge. The
instruction will consist of all the pedagogical devices used at present,
ranging from textual criticism to open discussion of opinion.
2. Formal lectures. These lectures will be formal expositions of current
topics in the liberal arts as they may arise in the reading. They will be
based on the expository texts, and in the course of the two years will
complete an exposition of all the liberal arts both in their historical

settings and in their contemporary applications. Such lectures will be
given to all the students at least once a week.
3. Tutorials. Since tutorials offer the maximum versatility in teaching,
they will be held for various purposes. Perhaps the most important
tutorial instruction will be given in the more difficult stages of
languages and mathematics, where formal drill and supervised practice
are necessary. They would also be held for detailed criticism and
discussion of papers written by the students. These tutorials are for
the individuals or groups as needs dictate.
4. Laboratory. A laboratory will be established and equipped for the
performance of the crucial experiments in the history of science, for
the practice of the arts of measurement and experimentation, and the
illustration of scientific theory.
Staff of Instruction
The major staff of instruction will be at least four in number, and they should
be distributed in their training and major interests in such a way that the subject
matters in this course may be covered by the combined competence of the group.
This is particularly important with respect to languages and mathematics proper.
There should be assistants to the instructors.
Students
The students will be selected by the instructors in the course from those applying
on entrance to the college. Selection will be made on the basis of:
1. General intelligence and ability, as shown by previous records in
secondary schools.
2. Judgment of the variety of complementary abilities and interests to
make an efficient working group.
3. Not over twenty students should be chosen in the first year.
Rooms and Equipment

The arrangement of rooms and equipment should be understood as functional
parts of the instruction. Special rooms should be provided for this course, as
follows:
1. Rooms for reading with a special library at hand.
2. A laboratory.
3. Facilities for common living, including a common dining room for
the students.
Degree Requirements
The requirements for satisfactorily passing the two years work in the honors
course are as follows:
1. Reading knowledge, competence in grammar, and evidence of actual

work in the course done in two languages, one ancient and one modern,
at the end of the first year.
2. Working knowledge of mathematics through the calculus at the end
of the second year.
3. Passing of a comprehensive examination on the subject matter of the
course at the end of the second year.
Final degree requirements are left for determination of the regular college
authorities.
APPENDIX B
Third Year and Final Honors
An arrangement shall be made whereby “the more favored college student”
shall, during the latter half of the usual four year course, be enabled to pursue
their studies in their chosen field of concentration on a firmer basis and on a
higher plane than less gifted students. These honors students shall be afforded
unlimited opportunity, under proper guidance, to master thoroughly their
specially chosen subject. In order for their opportunity to be unlimited, they
shall be at liberty, though of course under no compulsion, to claim exemption
from course requirements. In this way they will avoid the danger of being
penalized for pushing things to their end, where the course is not organized on
the assumption that they will be so pushed, or for seeking understanding of the
interrelationships among several aspects of a chosen subject, where those aspects
are treated in uncoordinated courses. The freedom of opportunity for such honor
students shall be matched by a correspondingly extensive ability of guidance.
Elementary justice suggests that honor students shall have special access to the
best teaching talent which the University affords.
The catalogue shall indicate to gifted students the availability to them of
special opportunity in some such terms as the following:
Degrees with Honors

A student who is recommended by an academic School and accepted by the
Dean of the College, acting on the advice of such body as he may designate,
may become a candidate for a Degree with Honors.
Degrees with Honors shall consist of degrees awarded (a) with Third Year
Honors (b) with Final Honors.
A student who has been accepted as a candidate for a Degree with Honors
shall register as such when the programme of courses in his field of
concentration is arranged with the official adviser of the School in question.
A candidate for a Degree with Honors is exempted from the usual

requirements of class attendance in all courses in his field of concentration. He
is likewise exempted from the usual examinations in all courses in his field of
concentration which his Major School may include in comprehensive
examinations at the end of his third year and his final year respectively.
Final comprehensive examinations for a Degree with Honors demand a rigid
compliance with particularly exacting standards of scholarship. In the event
that performance in the examination is not of sufficiently high quality for a
Degree with Honors to be conferred, the School in charge may recommend
that credit be granted towards the Degree without honors.
Comment
1. In order that opportunity for especially gifted students shall not, through
inertia implicit in the status quo remain almost wholly theoretical, the Dean of
the College will undoubtedly do well to act, in connection with honor students,
on the advice of a specially chosen body, representative of the University in its
corporate and impersonal aspect. Upon this body will in general rest
responsibility for making real the opportunity offered to honor students. Thus,
this body, in cooperation with the various Academic Schools, shall assume
responsibility for establishing and maintaining the highest standards possible,
to the end that only the very gifted student shall be considered worthy of pursuing
honors work and that only honors work worthy of the very gifted student shall
be offered to him.
2. The distinction between Third Year Honors and Final Honors is made
with a view to offering special opportunity to very gifted students who remain
only three years in the College. Among twenty-nine of the most recent recipients
of Intermediate Honors who, out of a total of thirty-seven, replied to a
questionnaire addressed to them by the Honors Committee, eighteen (or 62
per cent) were ineligible to undertake honors work, as at present instituted,
because they were not to remain four years in the College.4
“St. John’s For Two Years, Oxford For Two”

The Committee on Honors Courses had completed its first task. Of the
committee’s work Barr said: “the Virginia Plan put in a miniature St. John’s
program for the first and second year… You didn’t do any elective system stuff.
…In effect you went Oxonian in the third and fourth years and went to St.
John’s, which was unborn, in the first two. St. John’s for two years, Oxford for
two And it was a good statement.”5
It was noted earlier that, as the committee’s discussions progressed, both
Buchanan and Gooch had believed that their respective philosophies belonged
at the core of the recommendations to be proposed to Newcomb. Although the
two corrective schemes were unanimously recommended “as an integral whole”

and were “to be considered supplementary to each other,” Buchanan and Gooch
remained partial to the schemes they had each proposed. 6 Buchanan’s
recollections of the committee’s work, for example, demonstrated his partiality
to the great books program. As he later put it:
By 1935 the Virginia Committee on honors had argued itself to a

unanimous report which went far beyond the original assignment. Instead
of recommending special work for selected students in the last two under-
graduate years of the college, we proposed that a curriculum be offered
to a few students in their first two years. This curriculum would be based
on a hundred great books, the original list for the Columbia honors students
reduced to half-length and supplemented by great books in science, Euclid,
Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Fourier, Clerk-Maxwell,
and Claude Bernard. There would be tutorials in languages and
mathematics, and laboratories in which the great crucial experiments
would be repeated. The central piece in the curriculum would be seminars
for discussion of the great books themselves.7
In this instance, Buchanan’s recollections are somewhat problematic. They give

the impression that Gooch’s scheme for the upper-class years was dropped. As
has been seen in the Virginia Plan itself, this is not true, rather, the existing
Special Honors program for the final two years of college work was modified
and strengthened from its pre-Virginia Plan form.
As will be seen, Buchanan’s and Gooch’s preferences would continually
manifest themselves throughout their respective careers. Many years later Barr
recalled how Buchanan’s and Gooch’s predilections, and his own, had played
into the crafting of the Virginia Plan:
Columbia and the People’s Institute, and of course some Oxford stuff,
because Bobby [Gooch] had already done the last two years…. Well, that
part didn’t interest Scott [Buchanan] so much, he wasn’t as romantic about
Oxford as Bobby, or…or, I guess, as I. He was maybe a little Scottish
about Oxford: while Balliol College was a Scottish foundation, it had
gone pretty English in the seven hundred years since.8
Barr saw value in both schemes, but Barr, as demonstrated by this recollection
and by his career choices over the next thirty years, favored the new great
books scheme over Gooch’s improved honors tutorial scheme. Indeed, the
great books scheme was the part of the Virginia Plan that Barr and Buchanan
carried first to the University of Chicago in 1936 and subsequently to St.
John’s College in Annapolis in 1937, where they expanded it to encompass
all four undergraduate years.9
This sequence of events also suggests why the honors tutorial part of the
Virginia Plan has been essentially ignored by accounts of the liberal arts
movement. When Barr and Buchanan left Charlottesville for Chicago in 1936
they left behind the tutorial program as well, and later chroniclers have done
the same. J.Winfree Smith’s 1983 history, A Search for the Liberal College,
contains only two paragraphs on the tutorial part of the Virginia Plan, which
is under-standable considering that the book is ostensibly about the beginning
of the St. John’s Program, and the one-on-one tutorial program was not
brought to Annapolis. Amy Apfel Kass’ unpublished 1973 doctoral
dissertation, Radical Conservatives for Liberal Education, supplies only one
paragraph on the honors tutorial part of the Virginia Plan out of 350 pages on
the liberal arts movement. Charles A.Nelson’s 1997 edited volume,
Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of His Life and Work, reprints
the Virginia Plan in its entirety, except for Appendix B—the honors tutorial
scheme—which is not included at all. In short, half of the Virginia Plan’s
proposed curriculum has been neglected.
To be fair, in works primarily focused on St. John’s, it is not surprising
that the honors tutorial part of the Virginia Plan has received scant attention,
for it was the great books philosophy of education, not the “Oxbridge” tutorial,
which figured most prominently in the curricular program at St. John’s. Yet
Kass’ work on the liberal arts movement is problematic for another reason.
She argued that her account “describes and analyzes the circumstances and
problems that prompted the Liberal Arts Movement, the ideas and ideals that
informed it, and the various efforts that were made to develop and
institutionalize it.”10 Kass correctly asserted that, “The plan for the first two
years [survived] the administrative shelving at the University of Virginia. In
a more fully worked out form, it eventually became the core of the ‘New
Program’ at St.John’s College….” 11 Yet Kass neglected discussion of the
last two years of the Plan, which as noted above, received one paragraph of
explanation from her. If the tutorial plan is not to be considered part of the
liberal arts movement, then her work is effectively a study of the great books
movement, with emphasis on certain key individuals and their associated
institutions. However, if the liberal arts movement, at least at Virginia, is a
composite of the great books movement and the honors program movement—
a logical assumption given that the two programs were unanimously proposed
as supplementary and as “an integral whole” in the Virginia Plan—then both
need to be given proper consideration. Even if one were to argue that these
distinctions are merely matters of semantics, it is clear that the new honors
tutorial program at Virginia, like the “New Program” at St. John’s, was
ultimately the result of the Virginia Plan submitted by Gooch’s Committee
on Honors Courses in 1935. Indeed, as will be seen, Barr believed that their
later reforms at St. John’s were influenced in part by the Oxbridge model. In
short, if the liberal arts movement is to include the Oxbridge-style reforms
(and the historical evidence unequivocally suggests that it must), then a more
capacious definition of the liberal arts movement is required than the one
offered by Kass. This definition must encompass both the place of the great
books and the honors tutorial with its emphasis on final comprehensive
examinations.
This more inclusive definition also makes more pertinent the fact that the
Oxbridge tutorial plan crafted and adopted at Virginia remains a neglected
topic in the history of curricular reform. This omission is peculiar given the
place of Oxford and Cambridge in the history of higher education, the renown
of their tutorial system, and the presence during the twentieth century of
thousands of Rhodes Scholars in America who experienced the tutorial system
in England. All of these facts argue that a program implemented in America,
one which was based in part on the tutorial model and all its attendant history,
is important.
The Elite Quality of the Virginia Plan

Another important point to be noted about the Virginia Plan was its elitist
Jeffersonian quality. In spite of Buchanan’s later recollection to the contrary,
the Virginia Plan gave no indication that it was intended for everyone. Instead
it indicated just the opposite. Of Appendix A—the great books scheme—of the
Virginia Plan, Buchanan wrote in 1962 that “We hoped that this recommendation
would start a few students on their own self-education, and that the curriculum
would finally be accepted by the whole college.”12 While the committee, or
individual members, may have hoped the curriculum would eventually be
accepted by the whole college, the Plan, as presented to Newcomb and the
faculty, was explicitly for a small group of elite students.
The culture of the University of Virginia in the 1930s was certainly what
one could call aristocratic and this culture was conducive to a program for
selected, academically advanced students. For example, Barr’s colleague in
the History Department, Richard Heath Dabney, wrote that “Jefferson was
right, …The unfit should be weeded out, for their own good as well as that of
the public The best brains in the state should have the best training available,
but mediocre and stupid persons should be positively discouraged from entering
college and positively prevented from getting degrees.”13 In a similar vein,
College Topics, the college newspaper, wrote an open letter to the governor of
Virginia, James Price, asking him to make the university “a retreat for the
intellectual aristocracy….”14 Whether or not the Gooch committee envisioned
that its Plan might eventually be extended to the entire college, as Buchanan
later claimed, is unclear, but there is no mention of such an intention in the
Plan itself. The radical makeover of the college that would have been required
in terms of faculty commitments alone suggests the remote possibility of such
a complete collegiate conversion.
The Committee and Plan A—The Great Books Scheme for Underclassmen
“A Scheme for a Course in General Honors”
In November 1935 the Virginia Plan, which had taken more than a year to create,
was completed and unanimously submitted by Gooch’s committee to President
Newcomb. Many years later, long after they had established their great books
program at St. John’s, Barr recollected that: “…Newcomb didn’t like [the
introduction to the Plan], he thought it was very offensive.”15 But Newcomb
was intrigued by the Plan’s prescriptions. Once Newcomb had read the Virginia
Plan it was split into its two schemes for presentation to the Committee on
Academic Legislation for faculty consideration. The members of Gooch’s
Honors Committee decided first to attempt adoption of Buchanan’s honors great
books scheme for underclassmen laid out in Appendix A of their Virginia Plan.
Once the faculty had made a decision on that scheme, then they would present
Gooch’s upper-class scheme for the new honors tutorial program laid out in
Appendix B of the Virginia Plan.
Perhaps because of Newcomb’s initial negative reaction to Barr’s
introduction to their report, the members of Gooch’s committee believed it
necessary to re-phrase the introduction and Appendix A before submitting it
for faculty consideration. Accordingly, a new preamble and a restatement of
Appendix A, collectively titled “A Scheme for a Course in General Honors,”
was drafted to argue the case for the plan in Appendix A—the great books
scheme for gifted underclassmen. As best as they could, given its radical
proposal for setting up an honors college within the regular college, the
committee members clearly crafted “A Scheme for a Course in General Honors”
for maximum acceptance by the Virginia faculty. Because he was the primary
author of Appendix A, Buchanan most likely oversaw this restatement.
“A Scheme for a Course in General Honors” opened with a preamble that
repeated Barr’s acerbic critique of collegiate education, but which avoided the
complete condemnation of collegiate education found in the initial version of
the Virginia Plan submitted to Newcomb. This time the Virginia Plan authors
noted that some benefits had accrued from the adoption of electivism: “By
means of the free elective system we have been able to absorb the natural
sciences and useful arts in our academic system and consequently to increase
the range of our services to a democratic industrial society.” However, they
also quickly noted that electivism had created two major problems: “First, we
no longer know what the few essential subject-matters are that go to make up
the best education. Secondly, we are not providing the techniques and disciplines
without which the best geniuses go away undeveloped and unsatisfied.” The
committee members believed their Virginia Plan was a good way to start
correcting the situation. They argued that “this plan is devised to meet these
two problems and to provide a method by which we may put ourselves on the
way to working out a solution.”16
The Committee’s new preamble also made appeals to Jefferson, arguing

that the Virginia Plan would revive his educational philosophy at his University.
That Jefferson had introduced electivism to American higher education was
ignored, thereby implicitly arguing that Jefferson would have never approved
of the alleged perversions that electivism had undergone between the first and
last quarters of the nineteenth century. Apparently, the circumscribed electivism
that Jefferson had advocated as a way to free the university from the low level
of education enforced at other colleges had evolved, according to the Virginia
Plan authors, into a radical electivism that declared all subjects as equal, and
perhaps more important, none as essential. It will be recalled that Jefferson did
not promote total electivism. During Jefferson’s tenure as Rector of the
University of Virginia, a student was free to choose in which school or schools
he would study, but once in a school, he had to follow the prescribed course of
study for that school. Jefferson had also believed that all university students
should be familiar with their classical heritage and his belief was manifest in
the Board of Visitors requirement that all diploma recipients be able to pass an
examination in Latin.
With this knowledge in mind, the Virginia Plan authors stated that their
plan had:
been developed from two main sources: 1) a study of the curricula of
medieval universities which laid down the framework within which all
European and American education worked until the middle of the
nineteenth century; and 2) a study of recent experiments in the
administration and teaching of honors courses in American colleges and
universities. It has been the aim to extract the principle from the practice
in each case and to find the conditions necessary for its application in the
University of Virginia. It is assumed that this is the wise way to combine
tradition and innovation.17
Regarding the first problem noted by them—that of the curriculum—the authors
argued that: “The curriculum of the medieval university, preceding the
professional schools of theology, medicine and law, consisted of the Seven
Liberal Arts, grouped in two divisions, the Trivium and the Quadrivium.” The
committee members stated that the trivium “consisted of grammar, rhetoric,
and dialectic, the three disciplines that study language, literature, and their ideal
subject matters, including what Mr. Jefferson called ideology, and what we
moderns call civilization and culture.” Likewise, the quadrivium “consisted of
Arithmetic, music (measurement by the application of number to things),
geometry, and astronomy (the measurement by the application of geometry to
moving bodies). It is these last arts from which our natural sciences have grown
and in terms of which they are still to be made intelligible.” Having stated these
points, the committee members proceeded to argue that: “A glance at the original
plans of Mr. Jefferson for the curriculum of this university will show the same
framework; it had not been forgotten in his time.” To bolster their case, a list
describing “the original Jeffersonian curriculum” was attached to the
document.18
The committee members then discussed how their proposed curriculum,
informed by these earlier guides, might be applied to honors work for the
better students: “The working hypothesis in such a course of study is that
languages and mathematics contain the formative factors and instruments for
the development of the human mind and keep thought alive in any subject-
matter. The applicability of these disciplines and techniques in any subject-
matter is prima facie evidence of their educational powers.” Even though these
disciplines and techniques “are still tacitly recognised (sic) in our present
curricula,” the problem, as the committee members saw it, was that “they are
increasingly ignored in our actual administration and teaching.” Buchanan
and the others argued that:
This is partly due to the fact that with large numbers of students it is
impossible to prevent these disciplines from becoming rote and ritual,
and partly due to the fact that it is only the best minds that can profit in
the more obvious ways from these studies even under the best conditions.
In spite of the present attempt to provide ideal conditions for students of
special ability in the honors courses of American colleges, these studies
have everywhere been displaced by President Eliot’s elective system, and
they have been relegated to an antiquarian status because of the supposed
modern necessity for specialisation (sic).19
The answer to these problems was “the reapplication of the seven liberal arts to
the best products of human thought as we have them in the recognised classics
of the European and American tradition by selected students and instructors.”
If Virginia adopted these changes for its best students, then the authors believed
that the university “would meet some of the problems of our present educational
depression.”20 Having made its re-packaged case in the preamble, the rest of
“A Scheme for a Course in General Honors,” then re-stated with only minor
modifications the content and pedagogy proposed in the original Appendix A
to the Virginia Plan.
The “Supplement” to “A Scheme for a Course in General Honors”

In spite of its slightly expanded reading list, its grudging acknowledgment of
some benefits arising from the elective system, and its institutional appeals to
Jefferson’s original curricular intentions for the university, it soon became clear
that the Virginia Plan great books scheme advocated by Buchanan and his fellow
committee members in the “Scheme for a Course in General Honors” faced several
difficulties. It was noted in the introduction to this book that the claim that the
curricular reforms advocated by Barr, Buchanan, Hutchins, Adler, and other
“liberal artists” were rejected, as historian Frederick Rudolph put it, “because a
return to ancient Greece and Rome did not recommend itself to most professors.”
Archival evidence relevant to the Virginia Plan’s fate at Virginia suggests that
Rudolph’s conclusion is too glib and limited to explain adequately the reasons
given for not supporting the great books scheme first presented in Appendix A of
the Virginia Plan and in the re-packaged “Scheme for a Course in General Honors”
The initial concerns about the great books scheme are lost, but are
nevertheless known because the authors of the Virginia Plan responded in
writing to the objections that had been raised by some of the Virginia faculty.
To be sure, “return to old-fashioned and outmoded cultural studies,” a variant
of the objection later noted by Rudolph, was one of the reasons listed why
some Virginia faculty opposed the scheme, but it was only one of nine reasons
noted in the Committee’s response titled: “Supplement to a Scheme for a Course
in General Honors.” The other eight reasons reflected, not curricular concerns,
but rather concerns relating to either personal interests or institutional factors.
In their supplement Buchanan and the other authors of the Virginia Plan
great books scheme argued that: “An appropriate and effective elucidation of
this scheme would come only from reading the books in the reading list. In
place of this a few comments can be made on the questions that have been
explicitly raised.” Regarding the choice of students, the committee members
noted the objection that: “There is the generally accepted opinion that a required
fixed curriculum does not take account of individual differences in ability. For
these and similar reasons it is presumed that students would not and probably
should not choose to enter upon a course that demands as much as this one
does.” Regarding faculty approval they noted that: “It seems that on account
of settled habits and customs in present educational procedure that the faculty
would not approve of a quasi-separate honors school that would devote itself
to general education.” The reasons included the following:
(1) The duplication of present courses
(2) Expense
(3) Irresponsibility of staff to present schools
(4) Loss of better students from present classes
(5) Loss of prestige of present curriculum and staff
(6) Return to old-fashioned and outmoded cultural studies
(7) Omission of pet subjects
(8) Doubt of the abilities of both students and instructors to do
thorough work in such a wide and difficult course of studies
within the practicable time limits
(9) The establishment of a new degree21
In terms of the choice of students, the Virginia Plan authors replied that, while
the details were “open to discussion,” clearly “the ‘best minds’ are those that
have the ability and preparation to read the hundred greatest books in the
European or Occidental tradition with a certain minimum of understanding

and appreciation.” Furthermore, “It should be recalled in this connection that
none of these books was written as a textbook for technical or esoteric
specialization. Their styles present only the difficulties of intellectual clarity,
and mathematical or literary elegance.” Thus, regarding the choice of students,
“the minimum of required ability would be average rationality and the required
formal preparation might well consist of elementary reading, writing, and
arithmetic.”
The authors continued by responding to the problem of faculty approval.
They suggested that:
Most of the difficulties of getting faculty approval of any scheme will
arise from a general funk and a consequent set of fears that evidence a
loss of effective standards and convictions in our present educational
practice. Faculties at present progressively un-educate themselves, and
compensate by praising themselves for their heroic renunciation of the
intellectual life in behalf of teaching. Students imitate them in behalf of
graduation. This course was devised to meet this situation. Its proposal
and discussion by the faculty might restore enough morale to eliminate
the nine objections listed above as shamefully irrelevant.22
The Virginia Plan authors believed that the forgoing faculty concerns were not
particularly significant. They did, however, believe that the elective principle
was “a serious objection directed against the underlying principle in this [honors
great books] scheme.” As they paraphrased the argument:
It is held that the individual student has a moral right of free choice which
should be allowed for at every step in his educational career. Modern
progressive education has derived from this the psychological principle
that learning is effective only if the interest of the individual student is
enlisted and held. These principles seem to conflict with the principles of
discipline as they are applied in morale and education. There are two
revered solutions of the dilemma: one says that internal freedom comes
only through self-imposed disciplines, the other that external freedom
comes only through intelligently imposed disciplines. This scheme seems
to satisfy both these demands in the large.23
Finally, the authors proposed that the objections might be better met by giving
an idea of what the great books scheme would look like in operation. Under the
Virginia Plan, “A modernized trivium and quadrivium would make mathematics
and literature the basic formal disciplines.” The trivium component would be
manifest as follows:
The study of grammar would consist in the study of at least two linguistic
grammars on the background of a universal grammar, and the application
of these to the reading of texts and the writings of essays in these languages.
Rhetoric would consist of the study of literary forms, including the analysis
of lyric and epic poetry, the essay, dialogue, drama, history, and scientific
exposition. Logic would consist of the study of formal syllogistic logic
and the structures of scientific systems as given in Aristotle’s Organon,
and other relevant writings in philosophy. Reading and writing would be
practiced to illustrate these formal studies, mostly by way of imitating
literary styles and analytical methods.
The quadrivium component would be manifest as follows:
Mathematics would be studied in three parts corresponding to the divisions

of the trivium. Arithmetic, geometry and algebra would be studied as
mathematical grammars in the same fashion that languages are studied,
with exercises to illustrate the formal principles. These would be taught
from the higher standpoint as given in projective geometry or number
theory. Mathematical rhetoric would consist of the devices, both symbolic
and instrumental, by which mathematics is applied. This would include
such separate sciences as analytic geometry, trigonometry, and calculus,
and a special laboratory, where standard types of measurement used in
the various sciences would be practiced as leading to the great historical
crucial experiments, which would also be performed with the original
instruments and materials. Mathematical logic consists of the formal
analysis of proportions, equations, propositions, and proofs used in the
other branches of mathematics and the sciences.24
The day-to-day operation of the great books honors program would consist of
lectures, weekly seminar meetings, and tutorial sessions. The Virginia Plan
authors proposed that: “The trivium and quadrivium would be presented in
lectures and practiced, as indicated, to parallel the reading”; that “all members
of the Honors school would attend the lectures, and the weekly meetings to
discuss the reading of the books”; that “the schedule of readings would be made
up to keep the subject-matter in step with the lectures”; and that “these are the
required exercises for all members of the school.” Additionally, “there would
be special groups and tutorial hours for individuals in which the interests, tastes,
and special abilities of the individual students would be allowed free exercise
with any subject-matter that they might choose. These might or might not be
within the lines of the set curriculum.”25
Decision Time
The conversations that followed this stage of the debate unfortunately are lost,
save one anonymous faculty member’s written response to the Committee’s
proposals. In it he made several points. First, that “the proposals of the

Committee are…, in spirit at least, pointed in a direction which I approve.”
Second, that a solution must be found to three distinct problems: “(i) the selection
of the honors students, (ii) the instruction of those selected, and (iii) the testing
of their achievement.” While “of these three the Committee has seen fit to regard
the second as central,” the author contended that the other two problems, which
were procedural and not curricular, were just as, if not more, significant than
the question of instruction. Ultimately, this faculty member argued that the
determination of “honors” should not be made until a student reached
graduation. Taking the great books program as an underclassman should not
entitle that student to “honors,” until his work during the last two years had
proven to be highly superior. In short this faculty member questioned, not the
curriculum of the Committee’s proposal, but rather the procedural issue of when
“honors” would be determined.26
President Newcomb’s response to the great books scheme likewise indicated
that factors other than the proposed curriculum may have been more important
to its reception. Newcomb may well have been intimidated by the great books
scheme, or never entirely certain as to what implementation of the scheme
would ultimately mean for the rest of the faculty and the college, but there was
another critical factor: university finances. When asked years later about
Newcomb’s response to the proposal, Barr replied:
I think we could have counted on the students being excited, and I think
we could have staffed it. But Newcomb felt he couldn’t finance it….
don’t know whether Newcomb would have done it if there had been
money, I never knew. I think it frightened him a little bit…. I still think
it was the way to go at it; just a small group of undergraduates, and let
them choose this instead of the ordinary curriculum. And I think it would
have demonstrated its value so sensationally that it…you could have
expanded it. And I think Charlottesville would have been a pretty swell
place to do it.27
None of these recollections suggest that the proposed great books curriculum
for honors underclassmen was itself the primary reason for the rejection of
Buchanan’s great books scheme. Indeed, as will be seen, later evidence from
the 1940s and 1950s demonstrated the continuing appeal of the great books
plan at Virginia.
The Importance of Financial Constraints

What does figure prominently in the recollections of the people involved is
the role of the university’s finances. While other factors may have played
into the fate of the Virginia Plan at Virginia, there is little doubt that the ability,
or lack thereof, to finance the underclassman great books scheme was critical
to its failure to win adoption by the university faculty in 1936. The anonymous
faculty member quoted above stated that “the more grandiose scheme for the
first two years (the great books scheme) was admittedly impracticable unless
a considerable sum of money could be found to finance it.”28 Indeed, the
university’s fmancial health was critical enough during this time that it is a
testament to the strength of the committee’s proposals that they were
considered at all.
To be sure, Newcomb may have been wary of the great books scheme and
its call for an honors college within the college. He may have pled lack of
funds as a convenient excuse to prevent adoption of the honors great books
scheme for underclassmen. But, Newcomb’s possible reservations cannot be
known with certainty. What can be ascertained is the dire financial condition
in which the university found itself during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Indeed, there can be little doubt that the horrible economic environment quickly
figured into the reception given to the committee’s Virginia Plan proposals.
Because of the Depression, the General Assembly in Richmond decreed a 10
percent across-the-board cut in appropriations to the university in the 1932–
33 academic year. Then, within Newcomb’s first year as president (1933–34),
an additional 10 percent cut was enacted, and some allowances were even
more drastically cut; “austerity was the rule throughout the university.”29 The
Gooch Committee’s Virginia Plan thus came out during a time of true economic
hardship for the university and Newcomb’s apparent claim that the great books
scheme in Appendix A of the Virginia Plan could not be financed seems most
plausible given the university’s financial condition.
A more detailed look at the university’s finances during this period is
instructive. For the academic year 1929–1930, the time of the initial stock
market crash, the university had a total income of $1, 583, 269. For the next
several years the university’s total income fell as the Depression deepened.
By the 1933–1934 academic year the university’s total income amounted to
only $1, 229, 866; a decline of almost twenty-five percent. The state
appropriation, which made up a significant portion of the university’s total
income, likewise fell from $452, 747 in 1930–1931 to $329, 850 in 1933–
1934. After this time the university’s overall finances slowly recovered,
although it was not until the 1937–1938 academic year that the university’s
total income returned to its 1929–1930 level. Also, although total income
started to recover after 1934, the year that Newcomb appointed Gooch’s
Committee on Honors Courses, the state appropriations continued to suffer.
From 1933–1934 to 1934–1935 the state appropriation rose from $329, 850
to $384, 664. However, it fell slightly in 1935–1936 to $382, 621 and then
plummeted in 1936–1937, the second downturn during the Depression, to
$302, 974. This decline in state appropriations occurred at the very time that
the university was considering Buchanan’s great books scheme from the
Virginia Plan.30
The question of how to pay for the underclassmen scheme was critical to
the scheme’s demise at the University of Virginia. At a time when the university
had cut faculty salaries by twenty percent, it was untenable for the university
to allocate almost one-tenth of its annual state appropriation to a new curricular
program for honors students. Years later Buchanan pointed directly to the
problem of funding when he recalled that:
We had asked for what has later come to be called a pilot plant. It would
take money to make it the model that would be imitated, $30,000 annually
for thirty students, six instructors, and separate living and study
arrangements. By this time President Alderman, who had originally
appointed the committee, had died, and Acting President Newcomb did
not want to seem to overreach his temporary powers by undertaking such
a radical departure from the conventional elective system in under-
graduate education. The committee’s recommendations were put on the
shelf for lack of money.31
Buchanan’s recollection that the committee’s underclassman recommendation
was put on the shelf for lack of money is corroborated by Barr’s recollections.
In a 1972 interview, Barr stated that:
Newcomb just said, you know, “There’s a depression on, and there’s no
hope of getting money for this kind of thing.” I don’t think he knew what
we wanted to do, and I think if he’d had the kind of interest in it that
several of us had, I think he’d have found some money. But it was tight, it
was tight. But my God, I think I’d have loved the job of selling one of the
DuPonts on that, because given Jefferson and DuPont and that business,
you could say, “This would be the kind of leadership that Jefferson would
care about.” So…it fell by the way.32
Clearly both men believed that money was the primary obstacle to
implementation of Buchanan’s great books scheme, and as will be seen, it was
this scheme for underclassmen, not the entire Virginia Plan, that was tabled for
lack of funds.
Newcomb’s lack of willingness to find additional funding for the great books
scheme may have also played a role in its difficulties. Barr later opined that:
[Newcomb] just said [the money] couldn’t be found. Well, I think this is
highly unlikely. [Buchanan] always said of the University of Virginia, all
the foundations in New York were baffled by the University of Virginia
because its origins and early history was such that it should by now be
really one of the Universities, and it just wasn’t… The University was
sort of just being elegant and sitting back.33
Barr believed that Newcomb could have done more to secure funding. A
letter from Newcomb to Dr. Frederick Keppel, the president of the Carnegie
Foundation, suggests that Newcomb’s efforts to get outside funding were

perhaps half-hearted. In his letter, Newcomb asked Keppel to review the
Virginia Plan and “give me the benefit of your reaction.” Newcomb also
noted that he was going to be in New York and would “appreciate an
opportunity of seeing you for a few moments during my visit.”34 Via Western
Union, Keppel replied that, because of prior commitments, he would not be
able to make any specific engagement, but hoped Newcomb would drop in.
Whether Newcomb met with Keppel or with any other foundation is unknown,
but not likely, as there is no extant correspondence of such a nature.
Coincidentally, Keppel suggested to Newcomb that, “You ought certainly to
see President Aydelotte in New York next week. He is the authority on Honors
Courses.”35 As will be seen, it was Aydelotte who, in 1944, praised Virginia’s
honors tutorial program as holding great promise, particularly if the great
books part of the Virginia Plan could be implemented in Charlottesville.
The possibility that Newcomb never pursued foundation-funding vigorously
is supported by a final recollection from Barr. In the years following his
departure from Charlottesville for Chicago and then Annapolis, Barr
occasionally returned to the University of Virginia. On one such occasion Barr,
Newcomb, and Chicago department store magnate Marshall Field were at a
university reception. Field had previously promised Barr fifty thousand dollars
for his work in Annapolis. Barr recollected that:
We started in the house to cocktails…somebody said, “Newk, here you and
Winkie are, and here’s one of the wealthiest men in the country, so why don’t
you do business?” And [Newcomb] says, “Huh uh, there’s no hope of that, is
there, Winkie?” And I went on in and as I passed Marshall, Marshall said,
“Let me know when you want me to mail that fifty thousand.” Newk couldn’t
hear him, but it was rather typical of him. I felt like saying, “Now, that’s what
I mean, Newk, we could have done that thing. But if you’re going to say,
“Well, where the hell is the money coming from?” it ain’t coming, Buddy, it
ain’t coming. First you’ve got to understand what it is, so you can talk about
it understandingly, and he didn’t know what it was, poor devil. He was a nice
guy, nice guy, but he never knew the price of eggs.36
Whatever Newcomb’s possible shortcomings as perceived by Barr and
Buchanan, he must nevertheless be credited with providing the official impetus
for the Virginia Plan in 1934 and, as a result, for all that ultimately would
come of it.
The Committee and Plan B—The Honors Tutorial Scheme for
Upperclassmen
“Third Year and Final Honors”
By early spring of 1936 it was clear that Buchanan’s great books scheme for
first- and second-year men would not be implemented. Newcomb sent a short
letter to mathematics department chairman John Jennings “Pot” Luck,

temporary chairman of the Committee on Honors Courses, in Gooch’s
absence. Newcomb wrote:
It now appears certain that we shall have to abandon the Committee’s

proposal for the first two years of honors work. I think your Committee
should meet as early as you can for the purpose of reporting the second
section [Appendix B] of the Committee’s report to the Committee on
Academic Legislation in order that we may get this matter settled and, if
possible, settled during the current session.37
Luck, writing on behalf of the members of the Committee on Honors Courses,

subsequently submitted the following statement to the Committee on Academic
Legislation:
After being advised by the president that he was unable, at the present
time, to finance such a plan for the more gifted first and second year
students as that outlined in Appendix A [the great books scheme] of this
committee’s former report, the Committee on Honors Courses desires to
recommend the consideration of the plan for third year and final honors
set forth in Appendix B [the honors tutorial scheme] of that report. To the
comments included in that appendix we have added a comment 3. The
committee is still of the opinion that the most important part of its
recommendation is included in Appendix A. We confidently hope that
some means may be found in the near future to put this plan into
execution.38
The Committee on Honors Courses re-submitted the Virginia Plan scheme for
honors tutorial work—“Appendix B: Third Year and Final Honors”—but the
Committee on Academic Legislation decided, perhaps in part because there
were questions regarding of what an honors tutorial program in a given
department would actually consist, to postpone consideration of the plan until
the fall of 1936.
As noted earlier, Virginia had a system of “Special Honors” that existed
prior to the Virginia Plan. The primary difference between the old Special
Honors provisions and Gooch’s new honors tutorial program outlined in the
Virginia Plan was that the new program prohibited any and all course
requirements in the third and fourth undergraduate years. Although this
difference might appear insignificant, this exemption was regarded as very
important, both to its supporters and its detractors.39 The new Virginia Plan
program also proposed to install a permanent Committee on Honors Courses
(also referred to as the Committee on Degrees with Honors) to oversee the
program in the various participating departments.40
From the extant documents, it is clear that the faculty’s reaction to Gooch’s
scheme for honors tutorial work was generally favorable, although particular
points were contested. One professor wrote:
I am sympathetic with the report of the special committee. However, I
find the report too negative. It appears to me to rest too largely upon a
somewhat despairing reaction to existing conditions. In consequence, the
recommendations of Appendix B suffer from generality. The situation
requires primarily an effort to improve existing conditions. Even admitting
the critical contentions of Appendix A, improvement can be found by a
better utilization of existing resources. If a barrage of text-books intervenes
between the student and classical sources, that barrage can be diminished,
if not removed. If the lecture system is over-extended and abused,
something could be done to reform the system. More specifically, I am
sympathetic with the general point of view of Appendix B, which, I
understand is alone to be considered at the present time. The suggestions
I would offer are not inconsistent with Appendix B, but rather seek to
correct its generality.41
The author went on to say that he was not sure that all course requirements
ought to be waived, for, “just as we assume intelligence on the part of the gifted
student, so we must assume intelligence on the part of the faculty of the school,
and the expression of this intelligence in the organization of the school’s
courses.” As a result, “I would urge that a sound, scholarly course of lectures is
an indispensable part of the guidance of the gifted student.” Additionally, “the
gifted student in his third and fourth years, however, excellently trained, is still
intellectually immature, and the lack of any course requirements may mean the
lack of important guiding and solidifying frame-work.” In closing this faculty
member argued that honors students, except in exceptional circumstances,
should be required to take up to three prescribed courses of a fundamental nature;
that, in addition to their individual tutors, each department should have an official
adviser to honors students; and that the University should consider requiring a
thesis of all honors students.42
Another faculty member, chemistry professor Allan T.Gwathmey, submitted
his opinion that, “It seems to me that the average student can obtain an A.B.
Degree at the University with very little work and with practically no intellectual
interests.” As a result, Gwathmey noted that he would be in favor of a special
system of study for honors students. He wrote:
Assuming that the necessary faculty were available, I thoroughly endorse
any system whereby good students would have the opportunity to carry
on independent study at their convenience. It would benefit both the
students and faculty concerned. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
has been carrying out something of this nature for several years and it has
been considered successful. The general plan…of beginning the honors

school in the junior year seems to me to be satisfactory. I do not think that
grades should be the sole criterion for eligibility to the school. Also, I am
rather opposed to a member of this school graduating with any particular
honors but this is a rather minor point.43
Some of these concerns were addressed by Gooch’s Committee on Honors
Courses, which submitted recommended changes to the proposed college
regulations to be listed in the 1937–1938 University of Virginia Record. In
response to the question of course attendance, the committee proposed that,
“questions of residence and attendance on lectures are determined by the Dean
of the College, acting on the advice of the University Committee on Final
Honors.”44 Regarding the issue of student selection, which had also been raised
in conjunction with the earlier consideration of Buchanan’s scheme in Appendix
A, the committee recommended several criteria. In addition to superior work
in all courses in the first two years of college—for which a student would receive
Intermediate Honors—the student was to submit a plan: “to pursue a programme
of studies which has been formulated in such a way as (a) to be quantitatively
equivalent to at least ten courses, (b) to offer the possibility of work of Honors
quality, and (c) to be otherwise acceptable to the University Committee on Final
Honors.”45
These new provisions were supplemented with departmental honors program
outlines drafted for eventual consideration by the Committee on Honors
Courses. The question of what honors work in a given department might consist
was answered first by the political science and philosophy departments.46
Appropriately, Professor Gooch was the first to draft “the kind of thing
‘programme of studies’ means to me.” Composed in October 1936, when the
Virginia Plan honors tutorial program (Appendix B) was still under
consideration by the faculty, Gooch noted of his “programme of studies” that
“I sat down and wrote this off with almost no preparation or reflection.”
Moreover, “I mention this (a) because I think the difficulty of formulating a
programme is much overestimated and (b) because I am sure that I could have
done better with more time and, more especially, in collaboration with my
colleagues in the School of Political Science.”47 In this document titled
Candidates for Final Honors Programme of Studies in Political Science, Gooch
proposed five divisions, some of which had multiple subjects. They were:
I. Government and Politics of the United States
(a) Structure and Function of Government in the United States
(b) State and Local Government in the United States
(c) Party Politics in the United States
II. Government and Politics of Europe
(a) Parliamentary Government and Modern Dictatorships
(b) History of Modern Political Thought
(c) Contemporary Political Theory

III. International Law and Relations
IV. Constitutional History
(a) English Constitutional History
(b) American Constitutional History and History of American
Political Thought
(c) European History
V. Additional Subjects
(a) Economics
(b) Sociology
(c) Philosophy
(d) History48
Within these subjects, political science honors students would have to become
familiar with: “representative primary materials; prescribed books that may be
considered classics; and representative secondary sources.” Under “Structure
and Function of Government in the United States,” for example, primary
materials included: the Constitution, typical Acts of Congress (e.g., the National
Budget Act), House and Senate Rules, and significant court cases (e.g., Marbury
v. Madison, Dartmouth College Case.) Prescribed books included: Tocqueville’s
Démocratie en Amérique, and Bryce’s American Common-wealth. Secondary
sources included textbooks on American government such as those of Beard,
Bromage, Johnson, Munro, Myers, Ogg and Ray, Patterson, and Young.49
In combination, the proposals in Appendix B of the Virginia Plan and the
sample program outlines were convincing to the Virginia faculty. By early
1937 the honors tutorial recommendations of the Committee on Honors
Courses, which had first submitted its Virginia Plan in 1935, “were accepted
with slight change by the Committee on Academic Legislation, were approved
by the Faculty of the College without a dissenting vote and were endorsed by
President New-comb.”50 Gooch’s honors tutorial scheme—Appendix B of the
Virginia Plan—had been approved for the 1937–38 academic session. Thus
unlike the honors great books part of the Virginia Plan submitted by Buchanan,
the honors tutorial program part of the Plan met with “better success” in
Charlottesville.51
Putting the Honors Program in Place

In February 1937 Gooch, having ended his hiatus from the chairmanship of the
Committee on Honors Courses, received a letter from Newcomb stating: “I
think the time has come when we should appoint the Committee on Degrees
with Honors, because I believe that this Committee should organize this Spring
and decide on those Schools which are prepared and willing to offer a set program
of studies for Degrees with Honors beginning next session.” 52 The new
Committee on Degrees with Honors thus officially replaced the original
Committee on Honors Courses which had created the Virginia Plan.53 The new
committee membership remained the same as the old one, except that two new
members, James Southall Wilson of the English Department and W.Harrison
Faulkner of the Germanic Languages Department, took the places of Barr and
Buchanan who had left the previous summer for the University of Chicago.
The new Committee on Degrees with Honors subsequently invited any
school, that is, department, to submit a proposed program. Those programs
had to conform to the new honors regulations in the 1937–1938 Virginia Record.
Each department also had to give the assurance that every honors candidate
would “be under the direct supervision of a member of the faculty of the School
who, in his capacity as Supervisor, will meet regularly with the candidate at
least once a week for at least one hour” for the student’s tutorial.54
At first most Schools, though in favor of the program, declined to participate
due to lack of time and personnel. Initially, for example, the School of English
stated that while “the English Faculty is in favor of the Honors Plan passed by
the Academic Faculty,” it was not prepared to offer honors work, but that it
hoped that it would be able to do so once it had personnel “adequate to give
Honors courses under favorable conditions” Other Schools were ready to move
ahead. In the spring of 1937 the Philosophy Department submitted, not only
an outline of the proposed program of study as Gooch had done for Political
Science, but its complete program procedures, albeit tentative ones, in its
Program for Degrees with Honors in Philosophy. “In defining the aim,” stated
the document, “we take our start from Jefferson’s statement of the goal of
education as embodied in this institution. Namely, to exert a salutary and
permanent influence on the virtue, freedom, and happiness of those to be
educated.” Thus, the objective of the program was defined extrinsically, “with
respect to the subject matter to be undertaken and mastered by the student,”
and intrinsically, “with respect to the student’s own internal development over
the period of Honors work.”55
In the course of taking the philosophy honors program students needed to
demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of the history of philosophy, take
the course in Logic and Metaphysics, and undertake some work outside of
philosophy. As for readings in the program, the department cited, “the list in
the Appendix [A] of the original [Virginia Plan] report of the Honors Committee
as illustrative of the materials we should employ.” In specific, mention was
made of works by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Kepler, Spinoza,
Kant, Hilbert, and Whitehead. Additionally, plans for tutorial guidance were
proposed:
(1) Each candidate will be assigned to a member of the staff, and

such member will serve as the candidate’s chief tutor, with regular
weekly meetings.
(2) It will be the duty of the chief tutor to provide the opportunity for
special tutorial meetings of the candidate with other members of the
staff.
(3) The selection of the chief tutor and arrangements for special tutoring
opportunity must depend in part upon the needs and interests of the
individual candidate.56
The Philosophy honors program was approved by the new Committee on
Degrees with Honors. English too found its way clear to offer a program. The
few upperclassmen invited to participate were the very brightest students. In
the early years of the program they numbered at most three or four in a
department, and sometimes only three or four in the entire College of Arts and
Sciences.57 Honors students generally met weekly with their departmental tutors
to review their weekly papers or, in the case of the sciences, their research, to
discuss their readings—which were often but not exclusively great books
relevant to their discipline—and during their fourth year, to work on their senior
theses. At the end of their fourth year, honors students took both written and
oral exams that were graded by faculty members other than their tutors and
eventually by external examiners from other colleges and universities. The
examiners, not the respective departments, would then recommend to the
Committee on Degrees with Honors whether a student should graduate with
highest honors, high honors, honors, or merely pass—as though the student
had been a regular departmental major. Altogether, four schools graduated a
total of six honors students in the first cohort of Virginia Plan honors students
in the spring of 1939: two in philosophy, two in English, and one each in Physics
and Political Science.58
A Unique and Unknown Program
By the end of the 1930s the Virginia faculty had tabled the underclassmen great
books part of the Virginia Plan for lack of funds but implemented the
upperclassmen honors program part of the Plan. In the process, the University
of Virginia had created an undergraduate program that was unique in American
public higher education. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, while other colleges
such as Swarthmore had honors seminar programs and, as already noted, the
University of Virginia had had its own “Special Honors” program, the new
honors program that came out of the Virginia Plan was different from all others.
Only the Virginia Plan honors program had the combination of one-onone
“Oxbridge”-style tutoring, not group tutoring seminars as was done at other
institutions, and full exemption from class attendance for honors students. As a
result, “At the time of its inception no other state university in America offered
any such program.”59
The historical literature on this point is wanting. For example, in stating that
the Honors Program at the University of Virginia started in 1937, Virginius Dabney
is only partially correct.60 It is true that the Honors Program proposed in the
Virginia Plan, which exists to the current day, was adopted in 1937. However,
Special Honors at Virginia had been in existence since 1924. J.Winfree Smith’s
history of the St. John’s Program in its formative years, A Search for the Liberal
College, correctly noted that the current Honors Program at Virginia, proposed
in the Virginia Plan, was a reform of the existing program in Special Honors. But
Smith, who earned his B.A. as well as an M.A. in History and a Ph.D. in
Philosophy at Virginia, devoted only two paragraphs to the honors tutorial scheme,
and failed to mention that the resulting program was unique in American public
higher education. To be fair, Smith’s subject was not Virginia, it was St. John’s.
Yet considering that, as a result of the Virginia Plan—which also provided the
basis for the St. John’s “New Program” curriculum—the University of Virginia
developed what was the sole one-on-one “Oxbridge”-style tutorial system in the
country, it seems a significant historical oversight. Other literature makes no
reference to Virginia’s program at all.
Conclusion
Because the great books scheme was not adopted in 1936 when Barr and
Buchanan were in Charlottesville, their accounts of the effort describe the
Virginia Plan as a failure, as far as the University of Virginia was concerned.
On the other hand, because the tutorial part of the plan was adopted in 1937 by
the faculty senate, Gooch and later administrators at the university regarded
the 1930s history of the Virginia Plan as a partial success. It was noted earlier
that Barr thought that Newcomb was “an awful choice” for president. It is telling
that Gooch, perhaps reflecting his appraisal of the results of the Virginia Plan
and his partiality to the honors tutorial scheme, said of Newcomb, “on the whole,
I think he was the best president we ever had.”61
The honors tutorial program was in effect for the 1937–38 academic year.
Of the new program, Dabney recorded that:
President Newcomb explained that the “more favored students, during
the latter half of their four-year course, shall be enabled to pursue their
studies in their chosen field of concentration on a firmer basis and a higher
plane than the less gifted.” He added that these honor students would be
afforded “unlimited opportunity, under proper guidance, to master
thoroughly their specially chosen subjects” and they would be “at
liberty…to claim exemption from course requirements.” Final
comprehensive examinations for a degree with honors “will demand a
rigid compliance with particularly exacting standards of scholarship.”62
But World War II soon intervened and life at the University was profoundly
disrupted. Questions about the best way to produce liberally educated students
were put on hold. The war years, and many changes, would pass before renewed
efforts were made to implement the Virginia Plan great books scheme at Virginia.
CHAPTER 4
Developments at Virginia, Chicago,
and St. John’s
“On with the opera maxima.”
—Scott Buchanan

Despair in the Old Dominion
“You can’t do the thing at Virginia…and you know it….” Adler wrote from
Chicago to Buchanan not long after the Virginia Plan had been submitted and
President Newcomb had been unable, or perhaps unwilling, to raise the necessary
funds to implement the great books honors scheme for underclassmen. 1
Buchanan had been clinging to the hope that Newcomb might yet secure the
funds for the great books scheme outlined in Appendix A of the Virginia Plan.
He wrote Adler: “Supposing something happens, we may have some excitement
about that.”2 However, as directly stated by Adler, those hopes were unlikely to
be realized. Buchanan and Barr were faced with the question of what, if anything,
to do next. As Buchanan put it, he and Barr found themselves in a difficult
situation: the “anomaly of serious conservatives in exile.”3
Curricular developments in Charlottesville and Hyde Park were intertwined
in the mid-1930s and the “liberal artists” at both universities were in close
communication. In fact, around the time that the Virginia Plan was submitted
to Newcomb by the Gooch Committee on Honors Courses in November 1935,
Adler proposed to Hutchins that Barr should be named the Dean of the College
at Chicago. As Adler wrote to Buchanan, he proposed Barr for three reasons:
“(1) [Barr] is sound about college education, as sound as anyone can be; (2)
[Barr] has guts of the kind [Hutchins] needs to put over the really radical
program we have all been talking about; and (3) [Barr] is a man of character, a
gentleman, and not a politician.”4 Adler also proposed that Buchanan should
be named a professor in the College at Chicago. Just as Adler stated to Buchanan
that the Virginia Plan—meaning just Buchanan’s great books scheme in this
case—would not be adopted at Virginia, so too Adler said, “…you may not be
able to do it here [at Chicago], but the chance with Winkie as Dean and you
and I and Arthur [Rubin] as professors in the College is pretty great.”5 Although
Barr, Buchanan, and Adler were all enthusiastic about the prospect, Hutchins
did not extend any formal offers to Barr or Buchanan—that would have to
wait until 1936 and the plans for a new Committee on the Liberal Arts at
Chicago. In the meantime, Barr and Buchanan faced the task of trying to
implement the Virginia Plan at the University of Virginia.
101
When it became obvious that the great books scheme was facing serious
difficulty—that funds would not be forthcoming—Buchanan became
increasingly despairing. He wrote Adler that he was “completely washed up”
at Virginia and “completely washed up on academic philosophy.”6 Barr’s own
recollections support the case that Buchanan was quite unhappy. Barr recalled:
“[Buchanan] had sort of had it. He liked a lot of things about the University of
Virginia but he didn’t want to continue teaching there, and I don’t think he
wanted to continue teaching in a department of philosophy anywhere.”7
Unhappiness became despondency. At one point, Buchanan wrote: “I am terribly
low, …I have simply got to leave this place; suicide is the end from all these
drift of events if I don’t manage to change things somehow.”8
Fortunately for Buchanan, change was coming. Indeed, when Buchanan’s
scheme in the Virginia Plan for a great books program for select underclassmen
was not implemented, his departure from Charlottesville for Chicago was
probably inevitable. By 1936, after several years of conversations with Hutchins
and Adler about a possible move to Hyde Park, Chicago had become very
attractive to Buchanan. Such a move finally became possible when Buchanan
and Barr were invited to come to Chicago for the 1936–37 academic year as
visiting professors of the liberal arts. They would join Adler, McKeon, and
others as members of Hutchins’ new Committee on the Liberal Arts.9 This
committee, wrote Barr, would pool the experience of its members and construct
“a practicable curriculum that would furnish the undergraduate with a truly
liberal education.”10
Barr and Buchanan Move to the University of Chicago

From the Grounds to the Quadrangles
President Hutchins had secured funds to establish the Committee on the Liberal
Arts and make faculty offers after publishing The Higher Learning in America
in the spring of 1936. Marion Rosenwald Stern, who had inherited a fortune
from her father, Julius Rosenwald, was one of several wealthy benefactors moved
by Hutchins’ arguments in The Higher Learning. For the Committee on the
Liberal Arts, the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago acknowledged:
“From four anonymous donors, pledges of a total contribution of $22,000 per
year for a period of three years beginning July 1, 1936, for the purpose of
analyzing and reformulating the content and methods of teaching in the liberal
arts.”11 According to Chicago historian William McNeill, Arthur Rubin “was
the impressario behind this venture.” Rubin, “a man of private means and no
professional occupation,”had helped to secure the funds for the committee from
Marion Stern.12
At this point, Barr recollected, “Bob [Hutchins] and his cohorts…attempted
to form a committee…and they were going to try to work out some sort of
curriculum. Most of them, I’m sure, had never even seen the one at Virginia,
Developments at Virginia, Chicago, and St. John’s • 103
which stuck.”13 Indeed, at that time, Adler reminded Buchanan in a letter that
he was still waiting for “the outline of your Virginia Honors Course.”14
Buchanan did get the Virginia Plan to Adler so that it could become part of the
Committee’s discussions once it started meeting the coming autumn.
In addition to Barr, the senior members of the Chicago Committee on the
Liberal Arts were to be the three associates who had originally worked together
at the People’s Institute in New York, namely, Adler, Buchanan, and Richard
McKeon who had come to Chicago from Columbia in 1934. In the meantime,
Hutchins decided conveniently that the Committee would be advisory to the
Dean of the Humanities Divison, who happened to be McKeon, and that
McKeon would be the spokesman for the Committee.15
Although it had yet to meet, the nascent Committee, being independent both
financially and from the regular university departmental structure, quickly drew
fire from hostile faculty members who referred to it as Hutchins’ “favorite project,”
“kitchen cabinet,” and “brain trust.”16 By August 1936, two months before the
committee had even had its first meeting, Hutchins wrote to the Dean of Faculties,
E.T.Filbey, that: “The Committee on the Liberal Arts got off to such a bad start in
public opinion last spring that I am anxious that all other handicaps to its successful
operation should be removed.”17 As historian Mary Ann Dzuback puts it, “The
timing of the venture, concurrent with the publication of The Higher Learning,
made it appear to be another effort of the president to foist his own men and
ideas on the division, which, of course, it was.”18
In spite of the difficulties that had already arisen, Buchanan was enthusiastic,
for it appeared that the primary obstacle to curricular reform at Virginia, namely,
money, had been overcome in Hyde Park. In contrast to Charlottesville,
Buchanan recalled that:
The situation at Chicago was more favorable. President Hutchins, who
had by this time published his book, The Higher Learning in America,
had been able to raise enough money to establish a Committee on the
Liberal Arts. Hutchins and Adler had led a seminar in the great books for
some years. McKeon, as Dean of the Humanities, could release some of
the time of his colleagues and graduate students for the work of the
Committee. Stringfellow Barr and I were invited to join and bring some
of our graduate students with us.19
Buchanan was eager to leave Virginia, but Barr had tremendous affection for
his alma mater. Although the great books scheme in the Virginia Plan had not
been implemented, initially Barr did not want to leave Charlottesville for
Chicago: “I didn’t want to go, I had an enormous and deep attachment to the
university I was teaching in—my alma mater—and I’d been very happy teaching
there.”20
When the discussions concerning the Committee on the Liberal Arts were
just starting in the mid-1930s, Barr believed that Hutchins and Adler probably
did not understand what Buchanan saw in him. Barr proffered, “I’m guessing,
but I don’t quite see anything that would have made Hutchins or Adler, at that
time, invite me. Later maybe. I had a rather good working relationship with
both, but at that time I didn’t.” Likewise, Barr viewed his possible colleagues
a bit askance. Of the early 1930s Barr recollected that: “[Hutchins] talked at
Charlottesville once or twice, like most of the people that listened to him then,
I disliked him—he seemed truculent, smart-aleck sort of, a boy wonder trying
to make the world over in an instant, and I thought that didn’t help him, in a
way. It may have made him feel pretty skillful, which he was, damn him.”21
In spite of his misgivings, Barr was eventually convinced by Adler and
Buchanan to take a one-year leave of absence.22 Barr and Buchanan started to
make their plans for the move to Chicago, which included consideration of
which graduate students to bring with them, even though they were aware that
the news announcing the formation of the Committee on the Liberal Arts had
not been universally well received at Chicago. Indeed, in a February 1936
letter Buchanan wrote to Adler, “Drop a line once a week to let us know that
the whole CLA [Committee on the Liberal Arts] is not blown up again.”23 For
his part, Barr recorded that: “I was very disappointed when Newk [Newcomb]
refused to act. He said [the great books scheme] couldn’t be done. Well, as a
result, I went out, but the Chicago thing sounded so, kind of, messy, in just
human terms: people at each other’s throats, and so on, and I didn’t want to
spend my life in a cat house.24
While agreeing to go, Barr was clearly not at ease with the prospect. Writing
from his interim quarters at the Colonnade Club, the University of Virginia’s
faculty club, Barr related to Adler that “today I moved” and “already the moving
psychosis is fading.” Barr had requested a confirming letter from Hutchins
before requesting leave from Virginia, since, as he related to Adler, “I have a
horror of misunderstandings and consequent indigence, now that I near forty.”25
Of this seeming formality, Buchanan wrote Adler that: “Leaving Virginia had
seemed gay and bold, but when one comes to the final break, although only for
a year, one wants to be legally secured to one’s step-mother’s apron strings.
Tell Bob [Hutchins], if it worries him that Winkie [Barr] will get over it when
we get to work, and that the Colonel must have his mint julep while he has to
sit on the ancestral porch waiting for something to turn up.”26 Happily, but in
retrospect, ironically, Barr wrote to Adler on the Ides of March, “it has been
many years—since 1919, to be exact—since I approached a coming year with
the same quality of interest and excitement I feel now.”27
In addition to outside faculty hostility, the future members of the Committee
itself were having their own difficulties. Since their days together in New York,
Adler and McKeon had grown so far apart philosophically that Adler told
Hutchins that a balance of power needed to be maintained on the Committee,
and that “for every ‘McKeonite’ there be a ‘Buchananite’ on the staff.”28
Similarly, to Buchanan, Adler wrote: “The Dick [McKeon] problem certainly
grows,” but, “it certainly will not spoil next year if we are careful.” Buchanan
wrote back that, regarding the infighting: “I dread litigation, recrimination,
and retaliation, since they should be incompetent, immaterial, and irrelevant
for our enterprise. Poor Bob [Hutchins]. He must think he has a bevy of prima
donnas on his hands. On with the opera maxima.”29
By late February, 1936, Barr and Buchanan were able to advise Adler, who
served as their primary Chicago contact, as to which two of their students
ought to accompany them from Virginia. One was Catesby Taliaferro, who
had just earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy; the other was Charles Wallis, a
“brilliant” man who had just earned his B.A.30 Also, Adler had proposed that
Barr and Buchanan should help him teach his Trivium course in the Law School
and the Honors Course with Hutchins. Buchanan replied they would, and
presciently suggested that doing so would provide “a possible asylum from
the possible catastrophes of the committee meetings” and added, “I don’t mean
to be ominous.”31
Barr, in the meantime, wrote to Adler that:
I have this a.m. [March 6, 1936] broached the year’s leave to Newcomb.
He regretfully accedes, but very gracefully. He expresses legitimate doubts
about my ever returning should I be invited to remain; but he is definitely
nice about everything. [Buchanan] saw him yesterday, with equally cordial
results, as Scott may by now have stated to you.”32
Buchanan did tell Adler within a week, adding that, “Newcombe (sic) objects
only that Winkie and I should be leaving together this year when he is under
fire.”33
Barr also entertained the idea of teaching in the history department at Chicago
in addition to his other obligations. To Adler he wrote:
If there is any possibility that I can aid our joint enterprise by forming a
link with the “professional” historians…I want it to happen. If you disagree
with this diagnosis, be candid. You do, after all, know the ground, which
I don’t. But remember I am far less oppressed by the academic racket
than, I judge, Scott [Buchanan] is, for example.34
Adler had already proffered that such a link might well be helpful. He thought
Barr should be able to do so, “without placing too heavy a burden upon yourself.
After all, next year should in some sense be a year off for you….” especially
since “…the work of the CLA…will be mostly play anyway and not work.”35
Barr’s recollection was that at first, teaching in the department might not
have been an option: “the History Department said that if I came they wouldn’t
speak to me, because I was such a stinker.” Because the Committee on the
Liberal Arts was not officially part of any department, and because some of
the members, especially the “Virginia gang,” had received faculty appointments
solely by Hutchins’ invitation, there was a great deal of antagonism toward the
committee; as Barr put it: “this was a hated group.”36 Many on the Chicago
faculty believed that forming the committee was essentially Hutchins’ attempt
to make an end-run around the standard faculty appointment procedures. Barr
believed the faculty thought Hutchins was tricking them again, and appointing
his own friends, as had been done with Adler’s appointment several years
earlier.37 As Barr put it, “Where the hell did Barr come from? Where did
Buchanan come from? We didn’t ask them here.” Later in life Barr said that he
agreed with the faculty. He suggested that, in the view of the Chicago faculty,
“we wouldn’t have come in the way we had if we’d been honest men. They
were saying there is a trick going on here. And by God, I think there was a
trick. I didn’t like it. And I think it made [Buchanan] and me both very
uncomfortable.”38
From the faculty’s point of view, a committee, which did not have the usual
faculty connections, had been assembled to create a new college curriculum.
Moreover, this independent committee almost certainly would not look
favorably on the current curriculum offered by the faculty, and by association,
perhaps take a dim view of the existing faculty itself.
Faculty concerns notwithstanding, the history department overcame its
discomfort and, as Barr recollected, “later they found I was harmless and asked
me to give a course.” Barr “was smuggled into the history faculty” and wound
up teaching historiography in the Fall Quarter of 1936.39 Also, Barr’s course
would wind up adding a slight degree of legitimacy to the nascent committee,
or at least one of its members, since the course was in, and approved by, the
history department.
But in the spring of 1936 all still appeared up for grabs. In May Buchanan
wrote a letter to Hutchins in which he stated: “From what I hear I am afraid
that I am a rabbit that has jumped into the Chicago hat, and it appears that the
hutch is crowded. I am sorry, but on the whole calmly excited. I hope that does
not appear frivolous. If I could fully believe what I hear, I should express
sincere regret. They will take me back here [at Virginia] if that would relieve
the conflict. Let me know.”40
Such a reply never came from Hutchins, and Barr and Buchanan moved to
Chicago in the summer of 1936. When Barr and Buchanan left, the Virginia
student humor magazine, The Cavalier, saw fit to comment on their departure:
We lament the removal from the University’s brain trust, even if only for
a year, of Stringfellow Barr. The flaming red hair and the bright green
suit of the University’s best lecturer have long been a fixture of the Virginia
panorama. First-year men especially have lost much. History A1 is in the
hands of a new and competent teacher, but the famous lecture about temple
prostitution, the caustic castigations of his classes for the uninspiring cut
of their faces, the classic rages, the dislike for coeds, and, above all, the
illuminating teaching will be missing. Winkie Barr’s temporary stay at
Chicago will mean that the University has lost one year of a grand
professor—and the University cannot afford it.41
As for Buchanan, The Cavalier gave the sense that the less-than-warm feeling
Buchanan had for Virginia was perhaps mutual:
As for Scott Buchanan, he has shaken the dust of Rugby Road from his
heels forever. At the University of Chicago, where he will work under an
educational theory similar to the “honors school” he advocated for
Virginia, we wish him the best of fortune. Respected and admired by the
group of earnest students that gathered about him, he was little known to
the greater number of University students. And so, in the minds of most
students, the obituary to the career of Scott Buchanan, philosopher and
teacher, at this University will be: “His name looked well in the
Catalogue”42
The Chicago Committee on the Liberal Arts

Debacle On the Midway
In his 1935–36 Report of the President, Robert Hutchins wrote that:
The seven liberal arts were grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry,
music and astronomy. They constituted the whole of general or
preprofessional education in the Middle Ages. In view of the state into
which these disciplines have fallen, the vocational attitude of most
students, and the ignorance and hostility of many professors, it is doubtful
whether they can be adopted to contemporary conditions. The difficulties
of framing a program of general education without some resort to them,
however, justify the attempt.43
The Committee on the Liberal Arts was that attempt. According to Buchanan,
the Committee was “a three-year project working out a curriculum in the Liberal
Arts for the liberal college.”44 Barr, many years later and more cautiously, said
the purpose was to determine, “whether there was any way of working out a
genuine liberal arts curriculum at an American college.” The committee
members “thought that the Columbia colloquium and the People’s Institute
and the Virginia Plan were all highly relevant and would have been hard pressed
to name anything else that was.” Finally, the Committee on the Liberal Arts
was an attempt to “draw on all the past experiences you could and spend plenty
of time in doing what the Virginia Plan was supposed to do… except that certainly
[Buchanan] wouldn’t want that third and fourth year that Virginia settled for,
that…Bob Gooch wanted.”45
An organizational meeting of the Committee on the Liberal Arts was held
on October 3, 1936. The senior members of the group in attendance were
Adler, Barr, Buchanan, McKeon, and Rubin. Junior members included Catesby
Taliaferro and Charles Wallis of the “Virginia contingent” and three of
McKeon’s graduate students from Columbia. 46 The members dealt with
numerous business matters. They also drew up a list of goals, noted by Adler:
1. Three year assignment: a list of a hundred books; combining the
Columbia list and the Virginia list.
2. One year assignment: a shorter list of books to read. Not yet
determined.
3. The communal reading of several classics, such as the Poetics or
Russell or St. Thomas.
4. The drawing up of a list of books referred to as necessary by each
member of the group reporting.
5. A report by each member of the group on general topics in relation
to the arts, such as Buchanan on the Transcendentals and Adler on
rational psychology, etc.47
When the committee next met for its first regular meeting, Barr recalled,
“all hell broke out. And it just went to pieces.” The committee members
quickly discovered that they held differing ideas concerning educational
philosophy, metaphysics, and how to best obtain a true liberal arts education.
Adler wanted to start a Great Books curriculum that would commence by
reading Aquinas. Buchanan and Barr wanted to start with Aristotle. McKeon
wanted to start by examining where the liberal arts stood in the current day. 48
For his part, Barr stated that, “I was green as grass, I couldn’t even follow
the argument. Just terminologically I couldn’t follow the argument.”49 The
entire environment became charged with verbal violence and conspiracy:
“You know,” said Barr, “tell it to them rough, make them like it.”50 The
manners of the group, or more precisely the lack thereof, “horrified” Barr:
“Really an appalling display, unworthy of any institution of learning
anywhere on earth and I hated it.”51
Buchanan’s s recollection of the first meeting was less visceral:
The first meeting of the Committee on Liberal Arts will never be
forgotten by any of those present…. Although there was good will and
agreement on the problems set by poetry and mathematics, or the liberal
arts, and in spite of many interchanges of lectures and papers, McKeon,
Adler, and I, each of us, had constructed and complicated quite different
universes of discourse which reached into deep matters of method and
metaphysics. The three worlds separately had absorbed and accumulated
the energies of our associates. They also carried within them the stresses
and strains in our chaotic intellectual culture. Brought into proximity,
the three worlds discharged their energies at each other. Heat and light
became thunder and lightning. There was never another general meeting
of the whole committee. We agreed to disagree and to pursue our separate

courses.52
Although the participants differed in their interpretation of the difficulties
experienced by the Committee on the Liberal Arts, Barr’s summation is quite
plausible: “there wasn’t enough common intellectual experience to hold it
together.”53 This, of course, had become one of the primary criticisms made by
the liberal artists: that collegiate education in America did not provide its students
with a common intellectual experience that allowed for common discussion.
That the participants had all studied under the elective system in college and
been unable to reach a common basis of discussion is perhaps the ultimate
irony of the episode.
Because of the debacle, McKeon and his students determined to create a
separate study group while Adler decided to pursue his own work. Barr,
Buchanan, Taliaferro, and Wallis, the “Virginia contingent” as they called
themselves, also formed their own group and retained the title of the Committee
on the Liberal Arts. Buchanan noted that, “Our presence made McKeon, the
Dean of the Humanities Division, a great deal of trouble.”54 Indeed, McKeon
demanded that Hutchins make the Committee responsible to the President’s
Office, not the Humanities Division. This left the Virginians to fend for
themselves against a faculty already hostile to Hutchins’ plans to remake
education at Chicago in his intellectual image.55 The ensuing onslaught was
fierce. “The University of Chicago saw red, and they almost burned our books
so we couldn’t read,” recalled Buchanan.56 The experience convinced Barr
that he was wrong in his earlier assumption “that Virginians could outgossip
any other group of people in America.”57
Thus “failed” the second curricular reform effort that Barr and Buchanan
had been instrumental in creating. As had been the case in Charlottesville with
the great books scheme, the Chicago experience was a qualified failure since
the work done there made future work at another institution possible. Buchanan
later suggested that the inability of the Committee on the Liberal Arts to fulfill
its charge might ironically, at least in retrospect, have been a useful development,
for it meant that the various constituencies were able to develop their own
liberal education experiments:
Although there were sharp and clear intellectual differences that separated
us, differences that cannot be expounded here, and also some differences
that have always issued in what are traditionally known as “battles of the
liberal arts,” there were more practical difficulties in the strategy and
organization of education that required separate working solutions or
laboratories of experimentation. Hutchins, Adler, and McKeon had already
introduced an educational ferment into the large University of Chicago.
They had a strong following among the faculty and the students; also a
strong opposition. They had obligations to continue. The Virginia
contingent, as Barr and I and our associates called ourselves, had brought
the Virginia plan which needed a more speculative development in the
ivory tower before it could undertake the problem of practice and
administration. This we did in the isolation of one of the stone towers at
the University during the remainder of the year.58
Historian William McNeill, capturing the discontent of everyone involved,
summed up the Committee by stating: “they began by quarreling and ended by
sulking.”59 In 1950, Reuben Frodin, then Editor of The Journal of General
Education, and Assistant Dean of the College of the University of Chicago
from 1943 until 1946, wrote that:
The presence of the committee on the liberal arts on the Chicago
quadrangles caused a furor far out of proportion to the usual campus
reaction when a committee tries to wrestle with an intellectual problem.
Those faculty members who objected to Hutchins’ educational views were
joined in objection to the committee’s activities by those who felt that
one major revision of a curriculum (i.e., the College’s) in a short span of
years was enough. The group interested in continuous study and revision
of the liberal arts program was, as is usual in “crisis” situations, inarticulate
by comparison with the objectors.60
“What do we do now?”
After the committee blew apart, the Virginia group huddled and literally asked,
“What do we do now?” Buchanan had resigned from Virginia, so he was stuck
in Hyde Park, but Barr supposed he would return to Charlottesville once his
leave of absence had concluded. For the rest of the 1936–37 academic year
Buchanan suggested that they “just sit down and read great books,” and so they
did.61 Barr wrote that: “the Committee on the Liberal Arts foundered on personal
problems and a rump committee of five, under Buchanan’s chairmanship,
proceeded to read and discuss some of the books listed in the Virginia Report.”62
The reconstituted committee, reduced in size, consisted of the four Virginians
and occasionally Arthur Rubin. 63 Within a week or two of the original
committee’s denouement, said Barr, “we went into this little five-people dream
of Euclidism.”64
Barr also noted of the rump committee that, “at this point, when [Buchanan]
was forty-two and I was forty, our lives suddenly converged. And I do not
believe they could have done so had it not been for Chicago and Plato and
Euclid.”65 As had happened to Hutchins in his work with Adler, Barr had a
conversion experience, of an intellectual kind, during his committee work with
Buchanan:
Two of these works changed the course of my life: Plato’s Dialogues and
Euclid’s Elements. I had already read a little Plato, even in the original.
As a schoolboy I had of course studied geometry in a version that might

fairly be termed Euclid with some of the really interesting parts omitted.
The real Euclid was another dish of tea, and I became tremendously
excited. Moreover, as I read or re-read the Dialogues and watched
Buchanan lead our discussions of them I tardily got some glimmer of
how really powerful the act of teaching can be when the teacher can teach
dialectically. The discussion groups at Balliol, my conversations with
Mieklejohn, the adult seminars I had helped Buchanan lead in Richmond,
all fell into place. I was now certain that dialectic was the most powerful
of all devices for moving the mind and imagination; but, alas, I felt certain
also that few persons in my profession would ever recognize its value. I
observed that what Buchanan displayed that seemed so unprofessorial
was his extraordinary ability to listen and his apparent assumption that it
is sometimes the dullest person present who raises the best question. I
saw now that, aside from a disarming streak of sentiment about the [New
England] town meeting, his deep sense of human equality was perhaps
the same sense that led Aristotle to make the declaration that all men
desire by nature to know.66
As for pedagogy, Barr recorded that: “The Chicago seminar convinced me that
the academic lecture, even when supplemented by reciprocal opinings, was no
substitute for Socratic dialectic if the undergraduate was to acquire those arts,
or skills, that had once been called the liberal arts.”67
During the 1936–37 academic year the Committee members read classics
from the Virginia list and produced essays relevant to the liberal arts. Junior
member Catesby Taliaferro wrote a paper titled, “Plato and the Liberal Arts: A
Plea for Mathematical Logic.” Charles Wallis wrote a paper titled “St. Thomas
and the Liberal Arts,” and translated Saint Bonaventure’s “De Reductione
Artium Ad Theologiam.”68 However, the most important written work to come
out of the committee comprised by the Virginians was a series of essays by
Buchanan.
Buchanan’s Essays: Sequels to the Virginia Plan

As part of his committee work, Buchanan wrote three essays addressed to
Hutchins. Under the collective title, “The Classics and the Liberal Arts,” the
first was titled, “Tradition and General Education,” the second, “The Classics,”
and the third, “The Liberal Arts.” Numbering forty-one pages in toto, these
three essays are an excellent statement of Buchanan’s beliefs about liberal
education at that time and are, in essence, the expository sequel to the Virginia
Plan. In the opening paragraph of the first essay, which follows below, Buchanan
declared his intentions and explained the role of Robert Gooch’s Committee
on Honors Courses at Virginia in formulating a proposal for liberal education.
Buchanan started:
My take-off will be from Virginia for two reasons: first, because, as you
know, I got practically involved in curricular problems there, and in my
attempts to persuade my colleagues of the rightness of certain directions
in which solutions might be sought I persuaded myself of their validity
with respect to general considerations which might be relevant anywhere.
(See appended Scheme for General Honors [Virginia Plan Appendix A]
for the details of the conclusions and recommendations as of 1935.)
Secondly, because I have not yet been able to learn anything from the
doings of the local committee on the liberal arts which helps me to improve
and correct the Virginia proposals. Improvement and correction are sadly
needed, as I know from my own experience in drawing the scheme up
and as it is confirmed by comments by my colleagues on the Chicago
Committee. On the other hand, no other comparably articulated scheme
has been presented and it seems wise to push ahead with this beginning
in the same hope that I had in Virginia that it would irritate and stimulate
another better proposal. It should be noted that the “Scheme” is for a
small group of better students as it is written and also that it is a piece of
rhetorical literature addressed very particularly to the President of the
University of Virginia. It will necessarily seem simple-minded and quaint
to the President of the University of Chicago. I hope to make amends for
some of its faults in what I am going to say in sequel.69
Arguing that “I should like to make as strong a case as I can for what might be
called traditionalism in education,” Buchanan referred Hutchins to the following
sources: Whewell, Cambridge Education; Newman, The Idea of a University,
The Development of Christian Doctrine, Part I, The Grammar of Assent; and
Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (an essay in The Sacred Wood),
After Strange Gods, and “Modern Education and the Classics” (an essay in
Essays Ancient and Modern).70
Buchanan also addressed additional issues in this first essay that are central
to the liberal arts movement. Regarding the proper material for a liberal
education, Buchanan stated that: “My first and most general point is that the
only available medium which is adequate to the intellectual salvation (education)
of the American student is the great European tradition.” From this tradition,
“We should find the right selection from our heritage which will convey through
itself the burden of wisdom of Europe, a small number of books of intrinsic
merit both in subject-matter and in form of presentation…. They should be
organized in a rational narrative order; see the poor attempt in the Virginia list.
These should be the canon of liberal education…”71
Regarding the issue of whether liberal education ought to be an elite or
mass concern, Buchanan proffered the opposite stance from the one officially
taken in the Virginia Plan. As Buchanan had noted earlier in the essay, the
General Honors Scheme proposed at Virginia was responding specifically to
Newcomb’s charge that a program be created for honors students. Free of this
constraint, Buchanan argued in favor of a democratic approach: “I do not think
this general education should be aimed at merely the intellectual aristocracy. I
doubt if that exists in this country except in the eye of the American who has
not quite recovered from the patriotic fervor of the American Revolution.”72
Clearly Buchanan was demonstrating what Barr thought of as Buchanan’s New
England town meeting background and its emphasis on egalitarianism, a view
of the world not favored in the University of Virginia’s Jeffersonian conception
of higher education at the time. Regarding mass versus elite liberal education,
and the means to achieve that education, Buchanan made a final point:
I doubt if there can be an American intellectual aristocracy unless the
whole mass is somehow brought a little higher than it is being brought by
our public education. I can think of no more effective or fit way to
accomplish this preliminary task than the general reading of the classics
with as much of the liberal arts as can be recovered and made effective at
present. I am here following the parallel with the sacraments. They are
the minimum of discipline and they are for everybody.73
Having established the outlines of their endeavor, Buchanan was ready in his
second essay to tackle “the classics.” Acknowledging that there would be those
in academia who would reject his philosophy of education meant that while the
easiest way to discuss the classics “would be to appeal to the words tradition
and classics” because “everybody knows that a tradition of a civilized culture
is constituted by its classics” such an approach would be insufficient. Referring
to all of learned society, Buchanan stated that: “We are not sure what our classics
are, and many of us do not think that the classics in general or some particular
item or group of items are important.” As a result, the foundations of his
arguments had to be solid. “It will be better for us to take a longer road now so
that we can fall back for reinforcements when the issues are joined out on the
front lines of the academic battle.”74
Defining the purpose of the liberal arts was critical. Buchanan suggested
that: “There are some interesting equivocations in the historical usages of words
in the liberal arts. For instance, at one time the name of the liberal arts was
supposed to have come from liberi, children; at another liber, book; at another
from liberus, free-man.” The way Buchanan dealt with this multiplicity of
meanings has a beauty to it: “Since liberal is an adjective, and adjectives may
have many modes of attribution, I like to indulge my etymological appetites in
thinking that liberal comes from all three, and says that liberal education makes
free men out of children by means of books.”75
Because the mode of apprehension was books—great books to be exact—
the question becomes, “What is a great book?” Buchanan believed that great
books met four intrinsic criteria. First, “The great books are those that have the
most readers. The numerical measure is a bit shocking, but…it assumes that
men are rational and that if a book is read by many men, it must have the stuff
that properly interests the most genuine men.”76 Second, “great books are those
that have the greatest number of possible interpretations.”77 Third, “Great Books
raise unanswerable questions.”78 Finally, “The last intrinsic criterion is that
they shall be works of fine art, as well as of liberal art. Their form of presentation
must be such that they have an intrinsic truth that shines out immediately,
clearly, and convincingly to the disciplined mind.”79
Buchanan noted further that in combination, great books spoke with each
other—they engaged in what Hutchins referred to as “the Great Conversation”—
and “in the end or rather continually we know more truth, provided we don’t
forget as fast as we learn, and that depends on our intellectual capacity which
in turn depends on our discipline in the arts.” Accordingly, Buchanan argued
one must read the classics serially:
The general objection on the part of all regular faculty members to this
program is that the books are too difficult for the student. They are making
judgments on real experiences with the books, they say. That may be
doubted, but their point remains until they are asked whether they have
ever had students read these books in the traditional order from beginning
to end. They have no experience and we who have taught honors have
only a meager experience. However, a little thought about the order and
its implications will suggest an answer…. The last helps to understand
the first, as Freud helps to understand Sophocles and Sophocles to
understand Freud, Euclid helps Newton as Newton helps Euclid. The
principle here is that mutual implication in subject matter increases
facilitation in learning at some higher ratio than compound interest.80
The real problem, as Buchanan saw it, was that “We are all products of a bad
educational system without benefit of the classics and the arts in the integral
sense that I have been outlining.” The result, both outside of, and within, the
original Committee on the Liberal Arts was that:
We consequently appear to each other as heretics and sinners. I have

proposed again and again that we read any hundred books together to the
best of our ability; I believe there is magic in these books even for us. I
have proposed that we read them with an equal balance of mathematics
and language, which none of us have done. I have proposed that we work
at the liberal arts beginning with mathematics, since that is the only
concern in contemporary thought. These, with their counter-proposals,
have broken the committee into parts. We have done those things we ought
not to have done, we have left undone those things we ought to have
done, and there is no health in us…. I forget what comes next for a good
Episcopalian.81
In the third essay, “The Liberal Arts,” Buchanan argued that, via the process
that the nineteenth-century American philosopher C.S.Peirce referred to as
“abduction” he would endeavor to present a discourse on the liberal arts. In
doing so, he noted that “I am indebted to both the people here [at Chicago] and
in Virginia with whom I have worked,” among others.82 Buchanan then
proceeded to present an involved discussion of the arts of the trivium and the
quadrivium. Of particular importance was that the different liberal arts ebbed
and flowed at different times. He noted that Richard McKeon had given a lecture
in which he showed how, “the Alexandrian, the Roman, and the 13th century
cultures could be distinguished intellectually by the fact that logic and rhetoric
were subsidiary to grammar in Alexandria, grammar and logic were subsidiary
to rhetoric in Rome, and grammar and rhetoric were subsidiary to logic in 13th
century Paris. In each age the three arts had different formulations singly and
relatively to each other.”83 This ebb and flow demonstrated “the continuity of
the tradition and the complementary lights that one stage of development in the
arts throws on the others.” The ebb and flow also “parallels in an interesting
way the list of classics as it changes from period to period. At one time Horace
and Virgil are more important than Hesiod and Homer, Dante is more important
than Thomas, Aristotle is more important than Plato, etc. and vice versa.”84
Buchanan ended by stating the problem of liberal education and offered a
proposed solution:
The problem is this. There is no way of keeping the tradition constant
with all classics and all the arts held in equal esteem or even in a constant
proportional esteem with respect to one another. Not even a five foot
bookshelf and an accompanying encyclopedia would accomplish this.
Therefore we cannot draw up a list of books and write a syllabus for
instruction for a liberal college, and suppose that it is exhaustive and
exclusive for a liberal education. It seems that the practice of one of the
arts necessarily eliminates any adequate practice of the others, and the
appreciation of any classic in some sense distorts some others. Therefore
it is important to find out what our present stage of virtue and appreciation
is so that we may know what can and what can’t be adequately done next.
The arts can be practised only ambulando, not at one stroke, nor perhaps
even in one generation.
I suggest that we are rhetorically minded at present, but our best
rhetoric is advertising, and that is not a good place to find discipline in
the liberal arts. I suspect we find our highest virtues in mathematical
rhetoric, that is in measurement. Mathematics is the queen of our
sciences, much as we hate to admit it, and the physicist is the prime
minister. Our educational cabinet should be organized around
mathematical physics. But not to make the mistake of thinking that what
is is right, or will be right tomorrow, we should have a fully equipped
cabinet. The mathematical physicist should be matched by a poet, and

the five other liberal arts should have their equal representation; and let
the argument go wherever it will.85
Buchanan’s statement is important for in it he rejected the charge, often made

by his detractors, that the “liberal artists” were solely interested in retrieving
old-fashioned education and dropping it into modern education. He and his
fellow travelers did want to rescue the liberal arts from their displacement, but
they also wanted to adapt them to contemporary uses, as can be seen in his
emphasis on mathematical physics. Tried and true methods (arts) adapted to
current uses—this was their charge.
In the final analysis Buchanan left no doubt as to what he believed to be the
gravity of what the Chicago Committee on the Liberal Arts, even with all its
difficulties and disagreements, was attempting to undertake. Buchanan
concluded:
I should like to propose a new issue, one that I believe has both scholarly
and administrative strategy in it. It has to do with the reason why we have
both a Trivium and a Quadrivium, why one is up when the other is down
straight through European history. There is a great rift between so-called
verbal and mathematical thought throughout the tradition, and there are
a lot of ghosts ranged on the two sides making faces at each other. At the
extremes are the pure mathematicians and the theological humanists. In
between are the intellectual bastards, Leonardo holding the center. The
modern scientist is in direct line of descent from the center. The
mathematical logician confirms Aristotle’s statement about mules, that
bastards are impotent and barren. This issue goes back to Plato and the
failure of the Syracusan adventure, and can be found anywhere along the
line, to wit, in the Chicago Committee on the Liberal Arts. This is a real
issue and a great scandal. I think something can and should be done about
it. It is the task that Plato set for the Academy; it would be a grand job to
set for the 20th century and the Chicago curriculum in the Classics and
the Liberal Arts. Greater men than we have seen the problem and failed;
we might try pyramiding.86
The essays thus ultimately proved to be a mission statement. The committee

members had invested the full weight of academic history into their efforts.
The necessary path seemed clear.
The committee members continued their reading and discussions. At the
end of March, 1937, the Committee on the Liberal Arts submitted a report to
Hutchins. Two drafts exist in the archives and it is instructive to consider the
first draft and the changes subsequently made before its submission. The final
draft follows below, with the first draft text in brackets.
REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT ON THE COMMITTEE

ON THE LIBERAL ARTS
March 29 [25], 1937
This committee was organized in October, 1936, to study the liberal arts with a
view to determining their usefulness in education and research. Four anonymous
donors gave $23,200 [$22,000] a year for three years to support the work. The
Committee was originally conceived as advisory to the Dean of the Humanities
Division. As its work has developed, it has seemed wise not to limit it exclusively
to the study of those subjects falling within that division. At the instance of the
Dean and with the advice of the Divisional Committee on Policy, the Committee
on the Liberal Arts has therefore been made advisory to the President. We
understand that plans for the new appointments, if any, will in the future be
reported to the Senate Committee on University Policy instead of the Committee
on Policy of the Humanities Division.
The membership of the Committee at present is Scott Buchanan, Chairman;
Stringfellow Barr, Arthur L.H.Rubin, Research Associate; Catesby Taliaferro,
Research Assistant, and Charles Wallis, Research Assistant.
[Since the members of the Committee have had ten or fifteen years’
experience in teaching the 75 or 100 great books of the western world, both in
adult education and in honors courses at various universities, we have begun
the re-study of these books in the effort to reconstruct their connections with
one another and their mutually helpful understandings. In this task we have
had recourse to the great interpretive tradition that in European history has
gone by the name of the liberal arts.] We have begun with an historical study
of those writers who may be supposed to have some-thing important to say
about the liberal arts. We are seeking their completest formulation from the
Greeks to the present and are attempting a formulation which, we hope, may
shed some light on their contemporary applications. By the end of the current
year we shall have in written form our preliminary studies of the liberal arts in
Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, and Kant, and perhaps one or two others. Next year we
shall proceed to more recent writers.
We have no intention of considering at any time questions of organization
or administration. We are concerned with subject-matter and methods of study.
We have, of course, reached no conclusions of any kind. At the present stage
of our investigation we are prepared to say only that the liberal arts seem capable
of exploitation in contemporary education, that they are only slightly submerged
under our present academic procedures, that experimental operations in the
scientific laboratory best exemplify current applications of the liberal arts, and
that language and mathematics may be the best introduction to the best of our
modern disciplines.
We may need to add to our membership either for a few weeks or for the
balance of the grant, either from the University faculty or outside it. We
understand that the donors of the original funds are prepared to supply a
reasonable amount of additional money for these purposes.
Because of our belief in the importance of this project the majority of us
have given up our academic posts elsewhere. [We do not care to be considered
as candidates for academic posts, aside from membership on the Committee,
at Chicago.] We wish to devote ourselves exclusively to this project and do not
wish to be diverted by teaching, administrative, or departmental obligations.
[We think of the Committee as perhaps the beginning of a permanent group
which might be attached to any university or college anywhere at any time,
whose functions might undergo continuous development and change in view
of the rapidly increasing difficulties of keeping the ends and methods of
education clear and practical.]
Scott Buchanan, Chairman, Stringfellow Barr, Arthur L.H.Rubin, Catesby
Taliaferro, Charles Wallis87
Of particular importance in the report, both in its draft and final forms, is the
emphasis placed by the Committee on present-day education. The Committee
was “attempting a formulation” of the liberal arts that they hoped “may shed
some light on their contemporary applications.” They believed that
“experimental operations in the scientific laboratory best exemplify current
applications of the liberal arts” and that “language and mathematics may be
the best introduction to the best of our modern disciplines.” Clearly, and as
will be discussed later in this chapter, the charge that their work was regressive
or sought to impose “medievalism” was misinformed. They wanted
contemporary forms of the arts, not old ones.
Another critical point is the Committee’s stated independence. Although
stricken from the final draft, the original closing lines which stated that the
Committee might “be attached to any university or college anywhere at any
time” demonstrated that they conceived of themselves as dealing with universal
issues, and were not institutionally bound. As will be seen in Chapter 5, this
idea would resurface when Barr and Buchanan left St. John’s on another venture
in 1946.
Practical Considerations
In spite of the substantial goals in their report to Hutchins, the approaching end
of the 1936–37 academic year necessitated that the members of the Committee
on the Liberal Arts (the Virginia contingent had kept the original title) consider
the mundane issue of how to best continue their work, if at all. Barr, for example,
was faced with a choice. One option was to return to Charlottesville; he had
taken only a one-year leave of absence from the University of Virginia. However,
in a complete reversal of positions from the previous year, this time it was Barr,
not Buchanan, who believed he should resign from Virginia. Barr did not even
want to discuss the matter: “More than anything, [studying Euclid] led me not
to want to go back to talk with Newcomb.”88 But Buchanan believed Barr should
return to Charlottesville, talk with Newcomb, and see if staying at Chicago was
what he really wanted to do.
Barr doubted that such a conversation would be worthwhile. To Buchanan
he said, “I don’t think much will be gained by talking to [Newcomb]. I don’t
think he understands what we’re concerned about. I don’t think I could teach
him in the little time granted to me.” But Buchanan was unwavering. Barr
reflected that: “I think [Buchanan’s] dread was that there’d be remorse, and
I’d feel: Well, why did I do that? He knew if anything [transpired] like what
later was St. John’s, there’d be a lot of danger in it, a lot of hardship and
danger, and that I might later then say what the hell did I get in this mess for,
when I had a place I loved, which was in Charlottesville, teaching.”89 Years
later Barr wisely observed that, “[Buchanan] knew I was deeply involved in
the University of Virginia and my holding on with one hand to it [in 1936]
seemed to him to keep me from really looking at what we were going to do [in
Chicago.]” As a result, after the debacle with the original Committee on the
Liberal Arts, Barr believed that Buchanan was concerned that if Barr did not
visit Charlottesville and see what might still be accomplished there, that Barr
might “very easily think the whole thing has been a messy operation and should
have been avoided….” Barr recalled his conversation with Buchanan: “I’m
going back and if [Newcomb] can give a cogent reason for me rejoining that
faculty, I may do it. But if he starts buddying about it, starts getting soapy, I
want to know that, because I don’t want to waste my time.”90
In late February 1937 Barr wrote to his mother that he would soon be in
Charlottesville “to have quiet talks with Newcomb…and Bob Gooch and to look
at things and collect my wits for a decision.” Barr had determined that: “Something
is at stake which I value more than my preference for living in Virginia, and I
have turned out unexpectedly to be clergyman’s son and grandson. But before
reaching an ultimate decision, I need to talk to people down there.”91
Barr did meet with Newcomb, and the conversation did live up to Barr’s
preconceptions:
Well, Newcomb got soapy, and he said, “everyone here is very devoted to
you.” Well, I wasn’t asking for a vote. I wasn’t running for office, I didn’t
need a vote of confidence. I could see that my ideas on education didn’t
interest him or elicit any enthusiastic support, so there was no victory so
far as I was concerned….92
Barr’s second option was to stay at Chicago. The Committee on the Liberal
Arts was to be funded for three years, so Barr could continue pursuing his interest
in their work. Moreover, Louis Gottschalk, the chairman of the history
department at Chicago, wanted Barr to become a full member of the department.

As noted earlier, in the spring of 1936 the department had not been very receptive
toward Barr, but by the spring of 1937 they were eager to have him stay on and
teach. The reason he was asked by the department to stay on, Barr later recalled,
was, “to put it simply and brutally and without modesty, I lectured better than
most people there and the kids liked it.”93
The decision was not an easy one for Barr, but he decided to continue with
the Committee on the Liberal Arts. The Board minutes from March 11, 1937
noted that Barr was reappointed “visiting professor of the Liberal Arts for two
years from July 1, 1937, with an annual salary of $6,000,”94 Accordingly, on
April 3, 1937 Barr sent a letter of resignation to Newcomb. In the letter Barr
stated that he was resigning with “deepest personal regret,” that he was
“sacrificing a permanent connection with the one institution I love best, for a
two-year appointment in one I care nothing about.” Nevertheless, Barr felt he
had to make the decision he did:
My twelve years of teaching in the University [of Virginia] were the
happiest of my life. But, as you know, I have for many years felt that
American undergraduate education was in desperate need of drastic
revision. My service on the [Gooch] committee which reported to you on
a possible program of honors work convinced me there was a solution.
My service this year on the Committee on the Liberal Arts here in Chicago
has strengthened that conviction…it is my duty to see this job through….
Wherever I am to work from now on, my heart will always be in my own
State and at my own Alma Mater.95
Further insight into Barr’s decision, and Newcomb’s reaction to it, comes from
correspondence between Barr’s mother, Ida Barr, and Newcomb. Ida Barr had
forwarded her son’s February letter to her on to Newcomb in the desire that the
President see the “very frank statement of why Winkie has left you and me.”96
Newcomb replied in part that:
When he talked to me here I was confident of his final decision, which
was not communicated to me until April. He thinks American college
education is in serious need of change and believes that Buchanan and he
have found the best solution. He is genuinely convinced that what he is
doing in Chicago offers the largest opportunities for important service
and he has persuaded himself that it is his duty to undertake the task.97
No sooner had the Virginia or Chicago question been resolved than a third option
quite unexpectedly presented itself: to go to St. John’s College in Annapolis,
Maryland to overhaul the nation’s third oldest school.98 Barr had been convinced
by Buchanan that something needed to be done about liberal education in
America: “that part didn’t take too much sweat on [Buchanan’s] part because I
was very discouraged about what one could do in the elective system.”99 But
whether St.John’s was a good option compared to staying at Chicago was

unclear.100
St. John’s College

The Move to Annapolis
“That little college stinks” Barr once said of St. John’s. The college was in poor
shape: it was badly in debt, enrollment had declined, three administrations had
folded in recent years, the school had even lost its accreditation.101 But the picture
was not all bad. Barr recalled: “St. John’s was a funny mixture. It was shocking,
decaying, crooked, in a mess, demoralized, beautiful, elegant, a civilized
community. People had cocktails and all these stories could be told at a cocktail
party and that made life gayer…. A lot of the old South’s rot and decay. Sort of
a William Faulkner quality about a lot of it.”102
The possibility of going to Annapolis had developed because an Oxford
classmate of Barr and Buchanan’s, Francis Miller, who was a trustee of St.
John’s College, had discussed both the College’s problems and the work of
the Committee on the Liberal Arts at Chicago with Buchanan at a meeting in
Alexandria in May 1937.103 The crisis faced by the St. John’s Board called for
drastic measures. According to Buchanan, for the Board: “The first action was
to be in terms of educational policy, second, in terms of personnel, and then
and only then in terms of financial rehabilitation.” Certainly thinking about
the difficulties the Committee on Honors Courses at Virginia had experienced
with President Newcomb, Buchanan added: “This, it should be noted, reverses
the usual order of procedure in reform. Administrators will not take positions
unless money is assured, and they do not embark on educational projects until
they are given tenure and general approval.” Yet in the unusual case of St.
John’s, “the Board discussed educational policy with several members of the
Committee on the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago. Having decided
on their educational program they took up the question of the Presidency and
the Deanship. They are only now taking up the question of finances.”104
This order of priorities was demonstrated when Barr and Buchanan met
with the entire Board of St. John’s at the University Club in Baltimore on June
4, 1937. The liberal artists found the start of the meeting quite encouraging.
The chairman of the Board’s presidential search committee, Richard Cleveland,
the son of Grover Cleveland and a very capable individual, played an influential
role during the meeting.105 Of him, Barr recalled, “Dick [Cleveland] was a
rather imaginative person. Princeton B.A., and Harvard LL.B.—and I think he
thought ‘God, that’s an interesting idea, and in any case, they’re capable of
interesting ideas, they’re capable of rallying an institution that supposedly deals
with ideas.’” 106 Buchanan also reacted positively to the Board: “We sat and
explained the program that we would put in. We didn’t discuss anything else
until we did get that across. How much they understood, of course, was very
difficult to know, but they were impressed. And I felt that somehow we had
come to terms with them.”107 They had come to terms; Barr and Buchanan
were offered the helm of St. John’s. Taking into account the difficult situation
at Chicago, and weighing the problems and possibilities in Annapolis, Barr
and Buchanan decided to make the move. “It was a great relief for everybody
but the donors of the money for [the Committee on the Liberal Arts at Chicago]
when St. John’s called the members of the Liberal Arts Committee to put its
program into operation in little old Annapolis.”108
The curriculum Barr and Buchanan proposed for St. John’s may not have
played as much of a role in their move to Annapolis as either of them have
claimed. This is not to suggest that the curriculum, based on the Virginia Plan
and refined at Chicago, was unimportant, for that is not the case. However,
institutional factors played a critical role in the process. Late in life Barr stated
that: “I’m too stuffy a historian to admit that St. John’s called us. St. John’s
wanted a president, all right. They had to have one quick.” It was the dire
financial straits in which the college found itself, believed Barr, that resulted
in their move to Maryland. Buchanan, argued Barr, believed that “history wanted
us there…. But [Buchanan] makes it seem as if we were doing something so
exciting at Chicago that somebody in Baltimore or Annapolis or both said,
‘God, let’s have ’em do it here.’ And that’s not it. A mortgage was the issue at
Annapolis.”109 Clearly both curricular and institutional factors played critical
roles in the adoption of the liberal arts program at St. John’s.
Once Barr and Buchanan had agreed to the St. John’s effort, filling the senior
administrative positions was not easy. Barr and Buchanan, who had been in talks
with the Board, had offered the presidency of St. John’s College to Hutchins,
hoping to lure him from Chicago permanently, but he declined.110 Barr, not
wanting the position, then proffered that Buchanan should be president since the
academic program they planned to implement, which was based on the great
books scheme in the Virginia Plan, was Buchanan’s “baby.” Buchanan steadfastly
refused. Barr acquiesced and on July 1, 1937 Barr was appointed president. He
subsequently named Buchanan as the Dean. 111 Although he refused an
administrative position at the college, Hutchins did join the Board of Visitors
and Governors, and in March 1938 he became its Chairman. As Buchanan put it:
“President Hutchins, by becoming a member of the governing board, can at least
vicariously pursue an educational policy to which he is devoted without angering
the lions of academic prestige at the University of Chicago .”112
As they had done the year before from Charlottesville, Catesby Taliaferro
and Charles Wallis again followed Barr and Buchanan, this time to Annapolis.
Taliaferro had been hesitant. In a July 1937 letter to Adler he wrote, “I have
terrible misgivings about Annapolis, I mean about the Southern students I shall
have to teach there. Going from the Middle West to Southern Maryland turns
out to be a very bitter pill: a few years ago, I should never have thought of it
that way.”113 Indeed, as a Virginia graduate, Taliaferro was himself a Southern
student. Adler responded that while “anything outside New York looks the
same to me,” he thought Taliaferro should go to Annapolis: “St. John’s is terribly
important for all of us. It must succeed, and you must do everything you can to
help it.” Adler’s personality conflicts with McKeon had deepened, and he saw
no point in Taliaferro staying at Chicago: “Chicago is hopeless. From now on,
everything will be progressively McKeonized. That’s my way of saying that
poison is being sprayed on the tree of knowledge.”114 Taliaferro and Wallis
both decided to move to Annapolis. Fellow “liberal artists” Mortimer Adler
and Mark Van Doren also became regular lecturers at the college. With all the
primary actors involved, St. John’s College had become the centerpiece of the
liberal arts movement.
During this period correspondence between Barr and Newcomb at the
University of Virginia continued. President Newcomb wrote to Barr that:
If congratulations are in order, you have mine straight from the heart. I
am, however, somewhat inclined to send you the sort of message that Dr.
Blackwell sent me upon my election to the presidency of the University
of Virginia. He simply said, “I welcome you to the noble band of martyrs.”
Seriously I hope you are going to have a splendid opportunity at St.
John’s to try out the plan of education in which you have been so much
interested during the last year or two. You have my best wishes for high
success.115
Barr’s mother, Ida, was less enthusiastic. She confessed her concern in a letter
to President Newcomb:
I suspect you are feeling just as I am about Winkie’s latest move, pleased
that he has a chance to try his wings, but terribly frightened at what a big
bite he has to chew! No one knows better than you do how painful it is to
run a plant with no money. Besides that, it takes years to persuade the
world a place of that sort has recovered even after it has done so. I have
said, and shall say, not a word to discourage him, but you can guess what
I feel…. If Winkie was taking this step from self interest I would not care
so much, people have to pay for such motives, but doing it in the spirit in
which he is, a fall would be such a hard one, he so firmly believes in what
he is trying to do. If he fails, it will hurt much more than just not making
a go of being a president. I want to thank you for your last letter, and for
keeping his place open. Now, I shall pray you may get the best man in the
country to fill his place. Love to you both from a very anxious mother.
Affectionately, Ida Barr.116
Newcomb, maintaining that money was at the heart of the viability of the
Virginia-inspired reforms, replied in part to Mrs. Barr that:
I trust very much that he is going to be able to have the necessary money
to give his proposal a fair tryout. I am of the opinion that a small college
is probably the most satisfactory place for this tryout. It seems to me to
be largely a question of the money which, of course, is always to be
regretted but seems in this life to be an unavoidable barrier to many of
our hopes and dreams.117
Newcomb’s comments again suggest that funding certainly played a pivotal
role in the University of Virginia’s decision to pass on implementing the Virginia
Plan great books scheme in 1936. Yet his comments also suggest that the program
may have been too radical for Virginia. Because of its challenges to the status
quo, implementation at Charlottesville would have been difficult with or without
the availability of funding. Newcomb appears to have believed that a smaller
institution would offer fewer impediments to curricular innovation.
The St. John’s “New Program”

At St. John’s, Barr and Buchanan implemented the “New Program” which
Mortimer Adler referred to as a “radical innovation in collegiate education.”118
Buchanan wrote that at St. John’s, “the trustees allowed us to re-establish a
very sick college according to the outlines of the Virginia plan.”119 Moreover:
Our research on the history of the liberal arts has progressed apace, and
now we know enough to correlate their various historical formulations
with the books on which and in which they were first practiced. The St.
John’s program embodies our findings to date, and a major part of the
teaching staff’s work is the continuation of this research and the
consequent revision of the list of great books.120
The curricular program implemented at St. John’s in September 1937—
commonly referred to as the “New Program”—was based “on several
fundamental rediscoveries of what a liberal education is and on the pooled
experience of teachers at Columbia, Chicago, Virginia, and in adult education
in New York [The People’s Institute].”121 The roots of the “New Program,” said
Barr, were:
as old as the liberal arts themselves. But the New Program was called
new to distinguish it from the Old Program already in force at St. John’s.
And this Old Program was the typical elective system of departmentalized
courses totted up to make a bachelor’s degree. The paradox therefore
continues: since the elective system was introduced by President Eliot of
Harvard only a few decades ago, the Old Program was very new indeed.122
As a practical matter, the New Program was “a four-year, all required curriculum,
based on the Virginia list of Great Books, with plenty of mathematics and science
and plenty of laboratory.”123 The books were read in English translation (some
of which was first done at St. John’s) in the interest of speed, but all students
had to take a year of Greek, Latin, French, and German, consecutively, during
their four years. In addition to learning better the function of language, the
foreign language study was designed to let the students “refer intelligently to
the original text for doubtful meanings.” 124 Classes were conducted as
seminars—as discussion groups—although detailed drill was used to understand
books like Euclid’s Elements. To these were added expository lectures on the
liberal arts. The Virginia Plan’s emphasis on scientific and mathematical classics
was reflected in the policy of requiring students to take four years of laboratory
science.
In spite of Buchanan’s belief that the “Oxbridge”-style program proposed
by Gooch in Appendix B of the Virginia Plan was premature—that
undergraduates would not be ready for it—it is instructive to consider how
much of the Oxford method of education appeared in Annapolis. Some of
Oxford’s presence must be attributed to Barr, who was more receptive to
Gooch’s scheme than was Buchanan. Of the program of instruction
implemented at St. John’s, Barr recollected that:
I think more than [Buchanan] and I were conscious of was borrowed
from Oxford. I think it was an attitude rather than institutional
arrangements. I was the one that said to [Buchanan], “For God’s sake,
put in the Don Rag. Because I think that it is absolutely essential that
these people, when they get through a course, ought to be able to talk
intelligently about it.” And the Don Rag impressed me very much. The
English just couldn’t imagine not having a crack at it. Just asking [for]
a lot of paper and reading it didn’t seem to them an adequate accounting,
and it took some time for us to convince the faculty and students of the
necessity for real communication between them, for genuine
conversation and not with a ruler in your hand and grade book in the
other. That was one of my few contributions, I think, to instruction. But
I thought they proved at Oxford that if you couldn’t talk intelligently
about what you were doing, then you weren’t getting much. But the
average professor then would say, “Well, how could you talk about it?”
because he’s dishing out information and then checking to find out if
the information has stuck, is being remembered. And he didn’t realize
that awakening certain powers is more vital than giving you any item of
information.125
The pedagogical initiatives required changes in how professors—“tutors” in
the St. John’s parlance—worked. The main faculty innovation at St. John’s
was that all faculty members had to become generalists able to teach in any part
of the curriculum. They had to be “competent as liberal artists, regardless of
what their previous academic specialty had been and regardless of what had
been the subject of their Ph.D.”126
As president, Barr also implemented significant changes in student life starting

in 1938. One was that fraternities were no longer allowed to use college
dormitories. Without homes the fraternities closed.127 Barr had “great reservations
about Greek-Letter fraternities” and he believed that the fraternities at St. John’s
“were withering.” As a result he suspended their right to free campus housing in
the belief that they were of no benefit to the college, and that they were in fact a
detriment to the new college that they were trying to craft. Barr had been a
fraternity member as a college student. He had joined Alpha Tau Omega at Tulane
and moved his membership to ATO in Charlottesville when he transferred to the
University of Virginia as an undergraduate. Although he did not have “any
philosophy of fraternity-ism” he did believe that, at institutions at which the
fraternity system was strong, not belonging to one meant that “you’d pay a
penalty.” At Virginia, Barr’s fraternity experience had been mixed. He had several
friends there, but he also believed that “the whole thing has a little bit of boarding
school snobbery in it” and that “this seems to me silly stuff.”128
The other major change in student life was Barr’s decision to take St. John’s
out of intercollegiate athletics effective in the autumn of 1939. He stated:
“Intercollegiate athletics involves scheduling games a year or two in advance
without reference to the College’s internal needs on the date the contest is
played. It involves substituting a spectator psychosis for student participation.
It meshes the College with a semi-professional system in which scores are
more important than pleasure and skill.”129 Ironically, and perhaps to allay
fears that the college was no longer in favor of athleticism, concurrent with
this decision was the announcement that athletic scholarships would be offered
to qualified students—even though intercollegiate competition was banned—
and that intra mural athletics would be greatly expanded.130
These two changes were deeply resented by the students. Yet along with the
academic and pedagogical changes, they were all geared toward building a
program that Barr and Buchanan believed offered a true liberal education, the
purpose of which, Barr wrote, “is to free the human intellect, to render usable
the intellectual powers which in varying degrees all men possess….”131
Friends and Foes

There was widespread interest in and debate about the “New Program”
throughout the country. Numerous well-known individuals took sides as to
whether or not St. John’s represented an advance or a regression in collegiate
education. As noted in the Introduction, Walter Lippman waxed that “In the
future men will point to St. John’s College and say that there was the seed-bed
of the American Renaissance.”132 Similarly, in 1943 fellow “liberal artist” Mark
Van Doren offered that the St. John’s program:
represents the first serious effort in contemporary America to build a
single and rational curriculum suited to the needs of minds which have
work to do, and which someday should be unwilling to forgive any

system of education that had required of them less discipline than this.
Education is honored when it is hard, but it is most honored when it is
hard and good.133
Critics, however, charged the New Program at St. John’s was old-fashioned
and reactionary. John Andrews Rice, founding president of the progressive Black
Mountain College, asserted that:
St. John’s College, in Annapolis, is a vocational school, without a vocation.
With a curriculum straight out of medieval Oxford, it trains its students,
not for the church, as Oxford did then and not for any office in or under
an oligarchy, but for something pleasantly vague: to be artists in the art of
thinking, Neo-Thomist dialectitions, lawyers, without law.134
Indeed, Barr recorded that:
We were called fascists because we had abolished the “freedom” of the

elective system; crypto-Catholics because we all read some of the treatises
of St. Thomas Aquinas…; frauds because some of the books listed were
not in English—they were not, until we translated them; dilettantes
because clearly no reputable scholar would teach in all these “fields;”
and antiquarians because, since we insisted that everyone study Greek
and Latin, we must obviously scorn natural science—although St. John’s
was perhaps the only liberal arts college in the country that required four
years of laboratory of every student.135
The debate did not just center on St. John’s. It had originally started with the
philosophies advocated by Adler and Hutchins. In December 1936 Charles Clark
of the Yale Law School delivered the William Moody Lecture at the University
of Chicago. In his address, titled “The Higher Learning in a Democracy” he
argued that Hutchins wanted to use metaphysics to restore unity to higher
learning, much as theology had provided a unifying structure in the past.
Hutchins had said that, “If we can revitalize metaphysics and restore it to its
place in the higher learning, we may be able to establish rational order in the
modern world as well as in the universities.” Unfortunately, argued Clark, “I
fear this does not carry us forward to a solution. Theology offers a program of
action. Metaphysics does not.” Even if it did, proposed Clark, there would still
be the problem of defining that metaphysics: “its content remains unclear.” To
the extent that Hutchins developed the idea, Clark suggested that:
“[Metaphysics] remains only a symbol of an ideal, unfortunately barren, devoid
of all stimulating vitality. It is identified with the highest wisdom, which in
turn, is identified with knowledge of the highest principles and causes. But this
is all there is of definition given us of the ultimate principle of unity upon which
a university is to be built.” As a result, one develops “a feeling that the keystone

of the arch has been omitted.”136
At this point Clark had arrived at a common criticism from friend and foe
of Hutchins’ philosophy as it was presented in The Higher Learning in America,
namely, that Hutchins never defined his metaphysics.137 Clark stated further
that this omission, although problematic for Hutchins’ argument, was a good
thing. “The proper answer would seem to be not merely that it has been omitted
but that there is none—there should be none.” A metaphysics that served as a
rationale for intellectual unity could easily be authoritarian, just as theology
could be dogmatic. Although Hutchins was to be thanked for highlighting
problems in higher learning, he was overzealous in his criticisms. “The worst
is bad; the best is worth conserving; we should not throw out all to substitute a
false medievalism in the vain hope that there lies progress.” In short, argued
Clark, “The development of an authoritarian attitude toward education is the
one way to kill it.”138
Clark proceeded to argue that American higher education should instead
look to “the best” in the higher learning, “the experimentalism, the originality
of our scholars.” In doing so democratic society would “guard and cherish the
intellectual independence of the universities.” Ultimately, Clark concluded:
“We are returning to Thomas Jefferson for many articles of belief. Let us return
in closing to his statement of the aims of the University of Virginia when he
said: ‘This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human
mind, for here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to
tolerate error as long as reason is left free to combat it’.”139
Sometimes critiques conflated, understandably but often not appropriately,
what was being done by Barr and Buchanan and what was being said by Adler
and Hutchins. Critic John Pilley argued that: “When [Hutchins] speaks of
metaphysics as the highest of the ‘sciences,’ he comes near to talking the
absolutist language, [but] his good sense is too great to carry him far along
those lines.” Hutchins’ associates were not as fortunate:
In contradistinction to President Hutchins, both Professor Adler and Dean

Buchanan believe in the absolute truth of their own particular systems of
metaphysics, and—quite consistently with their own thinking—regard
anyone who does not accept their metaphysical conclusions as heretical.
Their systems of metaphysics are in fact nothing but theologies which
they find it expedient not to call by that name.
Anyone who is trying to discover what the Hutchins program is in
practice will be perplexed at finding that a schism already divides its two
leading practitioners. Whereas Scott Buchanan’s orthodoxy, which
provides the educational philosophy of studies at St. John’s College, is
on the whole Pagan and Platonic—leading to enormous emphasis being
placed on mathematics—that of Mortimer Adler, which underlies his
teaching at Chicago, is Catholic and Aristotelian. Both orthodoxies are at

one in being vigorously antidemocratic, although their authors seem not
to recognize this. Here, however, it is important to remember that a man
who is convinced of the absoluteness of a theory of knowledge or a theory
of value, however little it may be capable of substantiation, may quite
sincerely denounce all other values as “error.” There is no reason to
suppose that the Judges of the Inquisition were anything but sincere even
in the sixteenth century when the verbal basis of medieval philosophy
was becoming so generally recognized.140
Pilley concluded that: “Today there are many who advocate a return to the
conditions of the Middle Ages. Though their arguments are various we must be
on guard against them all.”141
Unfortunately for the educational debate, there were simplistic and
sometimes puerile statements all around. The New Leader couched the debate
as: “John Dewey versus Robert Hutchins—proponents of opposite educational
concepts. The Old Man represents progressive ideas. The Young Man retreats
into medievalism.” 142 Conversely, an educational traditionalist, Francis
Donnelly, argued that an article by Malcom MacLean, a progressive, used easy
and “opprobrious terminology” referring to Hutchins as “very medieval” and
“a facist (sic) dictator.” Donnelly continued that after berating Hutchins,
Believe it or not, here is Professor MacLean’s curriculum for unifying

education: “Science principles for weather, automobiles, radio,
television, next war and diseases; social principles of the Supreme Court,
crime, money, population trends; esthetic principles of streamlined
planes and trains, lampshades and clothing.” This curriculum is to
prepare the student “to find a job, to sell bonds, write radio script, teach
children—to help solve the conflict between the A.F. of L. and the
C.I.O.—to choose a girl to marry, bring up children, support a church,
vote effectively, pick the best doctor for ills and evaluate motion
pictures.” How the nondescript curriculum is to effect all these happy
results we are not told. The Professor has a trusting faith in the
experimental psychologists and their “diagnostic research projects” and
in a complete study of “contemporary society.” “Then and only then”
can we formulate our educational policy.143
Such easy attacks, made by those in favor of and those against the liberal arts
movement, tended to obscure more substantial discussions.
One such discussion was attempted in 1944. In an exchange with Alexander
Meiklejohn, John Dewey stated that “we are now being told that a genuinely
liberal education would require return to the models, patterns, and standards
that were laid down in Greece some twenty-five hundred years ago and renewed
and put into practice in the best age of feudal medievalism six and seven
centuries ago.”144 Dewey continued that:
The notion that language, linguistic skills and studies can be used of the
same ends and by the same methods under contemporary conditions as
in Greek, Alexandrian, or medieval times is as absurd in principle as it
would be injurious in practice were it adopted…. The idea that an adequate
education of any kind can be obtained by means of a miscellaneous
assortment of a hundred books, more or less, is laughable when viewed
practically…. It marks a departure from what is sound in the Greek view
of knowledge as a product of intelligence exercised at first hand. It marks
reversion to the medieval view of dependence upon the final authority of
what others have found out—or supposed they had found out—and
without the historical grounds that gave reason to the scholars of the
Middle Ages.
The reactionary movement is dangerous (or would be if it made serious
headway) because it ignores and in effect denies the principle of
experimental inquiry and firsthand observation that is the lifeblood of
the entire advance made in the sciences—an advance so marvelous that
the progress in knowledge made in uncounted previous millenniums is
almost nothing in comparison.145
Alexander Meiklejohn, in A Reply to John Dewey, argued that Dewey

misunderstood the reformers’ intentions:
Does the study of the past imply that we intend to imitate it? That was
certainly not true in the Experimental College. It is not true in St. John’s
College. Both those institutions have engaged in the attempt to cultivate,
in the minds of teachers and pupils, the processes of critical intelligence.
They study Homer, Plato, Euclid, Aquinas, Newton, Shakespeare, Darwin,
Marx, Veblen, Freud, not because these great minds were right but in
order to find out how right, and wrong, they were, in order to find out
what “right” and “wrong” are. One does not, for example, study Ptolemy
because he is “superior” to Copernicus. One studies him in the belief that
a prior understanding of Ptolemy may contribute to a better understanding
of Copernicus. And, that being true, I can find no basis whatsoever for
the assertion that the study of the past implies the acceptance of the
standards of the past as superior to our own.146
Meiklejohn continued by arguing that studying the great authors did not lead to
nor imply dogmatism:
When St. John’s turns to Homer and Plato to find a beginning for its
study of the humanities, to Euclid and Archimedes to find a beginning
for its study of the sciences and technologies, it is not looking to those
writers for “the last words” on those subjects. It is looking for “first
words.” Its entire scheme of education is built upon the basic postulate
that, from the time of the Greeks until the present, the knowledge and
wisdom of men have been growing, that, with many losses as well as
gains, they are still growing. And the intention of the curriculum is that
the student shall follow that growth in order that he may be better
equipped to play his part in the intellectual and moral activities of his
own time and country.
As he follows the sequence of ideas the pupil will be confronted, not
with one “static” set of dogmatic beliefs, but with all the fundamental
conflicts that run through our culture. He will find Protagoras at war with
Plato, Kant at war with Hume, Rousseau at war with Locke, Veblen at
war with Adam Smith. And he must try to understand both sides of these
controversies. He is asked, first of all, not to believe, but to think, as a
precondition of justifiable belief. How that program could commit St.
John’s to the acceptance from the past of “fixed” and “static” ideas, I do
not know. Such acceptance would seem to me more nearly a contradiction
of the program than a deduction from it.147
To Dewey’s concerns about the important role of science in contemporary

society, Meiklejohn replied that St. John’s students took: “(1) four years of
required mathematics, (2) four years of required laboratory practice, (3) four
years of required reading of the masters of scientific discovery (approximately
one-half of the great-books assignment).”148
The arguments against St. John’s were enjoined by philosopher Sidney Hook,
who, having flipped the argument, proposed that the liberal artists had an
incorrect understanding of progressive educational philosophy. “On the college
level,” said Hook, “progressive education takes its point of departure not only
from the objective needs and capacities of different individuals but from the
declared aims of a liberal education. It attempts to discover through intelligent
guidance what course of study will best enable this particular student to achieve
the most of what a liberal education strives to impart to all students.” Some
subjects as a result will be essential. Unfortunately, and similar to Hutchins
with metaphysics, Hook failed to elaborate on his arguments. In terms of
pedagogy, however, Hook did offer that:
Differences in the needs, background and capacities of those who are at

all educable point not to the necessity of a tailor-made curriculum in the
early years of college but to the wisdom of adopting different techniques
of instruction, specialized assignments, and projects of graded difficulty
to students of different powers. [Progressive education] avoids holding
them all to one dead level of uniformity, low or high, easy or hard.149
Hook also argued that contemporary American collegiate education had been
misrepresented by the liberal artists:
The defects of the elective system in current education have long been
recognized. But the steps that have been taken to remedy them have not.
Partisans of the St. John’s curriculum write as if the elective system in
our colleges is the result of progressive education, as if any prescription
is incompatible with its philosophy, and as if all colleges operate with an
unrestricted elective system with no common core of required studies.150
Hook rightly argued that the elective system was introduced before progressive
education made any headway. He also stated that: “Most liberal arts colleges
that reflect the philosophy of progressive education require almost a solid two
years of prescription in certain fields of knowledge…”151
Other arguments made by Hook, however, were misrepresentations. Of “the
spokesmen for St. John’s” Hook stated that: “All of them are firmly convinced
that the classic tradition should constitute the substance of college studies
because it is a great storehouse of truths which provide answers to the perennial
problems of human life and destiny.” Truths and answers are in fact not what
the leaders of St. John’s claimed to provide, but rather an understanding of
what humanity has thought about these ideas—an important distinction.
Likewise, Hook stated that: “In effect, what Messrs. Barr, Buchanan, and
Hutchins are saying is that the social problems of Graeco-Roman, medieval,
Renaissance and post-Renaissance culture—out of which many of the great
classics were born—are worth studying but not the social problems of the
twentieth century.”152 Again, Hook is incorrect in this assertion. One of the
goals of the liberal arts movement as construed by Buchanan and Barr was to
reconstruct the liberal arts in order to have a tool with which to understand the
contemporary world. In an imaginary conversation that Barr created for a lecture
he gave at an association convention in 1939, an antagonist refers to the St.
John’s Program as “archaism:”
[Antagonist:] Why spend four years reading the Greeks, when modern
writers have said the same things in up-to-date form? [Barr:] We read the
Greeks only in the freshman year. The juniors are reading Voltaire, Locke,
Kepler, and writers of that period. Next year their list will include William
James, Freud, Flaubert, and Karl Marx.153
In their minds, at least, Barr and Buchanan wanted to reconstruct the liberal
arts for modern application, not return to some past period of history.
To the argument that the great books should not be the centerpiece of a
curriculum, Barr replied: “A classic, unlike a college textbook, can be
understood at many levels, as witness the experience all of us have had
with Shakespeare or with Plato.”154 Indeed Barr argued that “those who
have taught the great books have found them more ‘contemporary,’ more
relevant to this year’s experience in short, than three-year-old textbooks

are.” 155 Moreover:
the greatest books have generally been written in the light of other great
books, frequently to confute those others. Each civilization tends to
produce a constellation of these great writings, which taken together form
a great conversation. One such conversation started in Greece, was carried
on in the Roman Empire, continued through the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, and is still going.156
To the charge that the New Program was culturally limited because it did not
contain great works from non-Western civilizations, Barr argued that: “On the
whole, I’d stick to our conversation, the one that started in Greece, not because
the one that started in China is no good, but because we already half understand
our own and had better finish the job.”157 Buchanan added that:
Four years is a short time for reading the books we already have on the
list. If I did not think people would go on gradually studying the books
these lead to I should think we were a complete fake. We are doing the
first reading of the few books which will initiate us to the study of all the
things we should know, including other books. I think the great books of
the Orient are included in that perspective.158
Barr also noted that when others reviewed the St. John’s book list, “you always
got a kick-back from some professor” which said something to the effect of
“don’t fool with all that stuff, why don’t you put in more of my stuff?,” which
Barr stated was “a good way to kill it.”159 As an example, one of Barr’s colleagues
at Virginia, Garrard Glenn, a professor in the Law School, wrote to Barr upon
receipt of a copy of the “New Program” at St. John’s that:
This program, indeed, has restored my equanimity…. You really do not
end with those two troublemakers, Marx and Freud, nor does your
prospectus indicate that all culture reaches its climax with the two
individuals in question. If I might make a suggestion, however, it is that
Francis Bacon be balanced by Descartes and Montaigne. I think you and
[Buchanan] slipped just a little into your Victorian background when you
omitted the thought of this balance.160
In the final analysis it appears that spokesmen on all sides of the debates
often misunderstood or misrepresented what their opponents were doing and
believed. What they could agree on was the general confusion regarding liberal
education. Dewey stated: “We are agreed that a genuinely liberal education
is badly hampered by confusion of aims and procedures.”161 Meiklejohn too
concluded that: “…we are dealing with a problem so difficult that men were
unclear and perplexed about it long before we came on the scene and that
other men will, presumably, be unclear and perplexed about it long after we
are gone.”162
Conclusion
In the early 1940s Hutchins proposed that the criticisms of the St. John’s program
were the result of the nature and organization of American universities: “Their
faculties are the product of that educational system which ought to be changed;
they have a vested interest in its maintenance. These men are all specialists.
Their professional standing depends on their concentration on their specialties.
Few of them have a liberal education, and few of them are interested in getting
one.”163 It was for these reasons, argued Hutchins, who went even further than
Newcomb, that an undertaking like the “New Program” at St. John’s could
only happen in unusual circumstances:
I would say that one of the things that brought St. John’s into existence
was the inadequacies of Virginia and Chicago. They showed the necessity
of separating from established institutions and creating a new, full-time
residential enterprise. If the Virginia and Chicago efforts had not been
made, the answer would always have been that the St. John’s program
could be incorporated into some existing institution.164
As will be seen, Hutchins’ insight may well have been true in terms of existing
institutions, but creating new ones sui generis was not easy either. St. John’s
particular situation—an existing college desperately in need of being made
over—would be, in retrospect, the most fertile ground for bringing the ideals
of the liberal arts movement to realization. What Barr and Buchanan
accomplished in Annapolis was quite significant. Forty years later, eminent
historian Frederick Rudolph called their program “a most remarkable feat” that
was “almost outrageous in its audacity,” and he concluded that: “St. John’s not
only paid respect to the intellectual heritage of the modern world and built a
community around a shared discussion of the problems and questions that have
confronted man because he was man; St. John’s may also have been the first,
and only, intellectual community in the history of American education.”165
CHAPTER 5
Great Plans,
Modest Accomplishments
“If satisfactory arrangements can be made”
—Colgate Darden
Honors Programs and General Education Reform

Frank Aydelotte, Swarthmore, and Virginia
In his 1944 book, Breaking the Academic Lockstep, Frank Aydelotte, the Director
of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, noted that:
An introductory honors course…was proposed to the President of the
University of Virginia by a committee in 1935, but was never acted upon
by the faculty. It was intended to provide during the first two years, by
the use of a selected list of the greatest classics from Greek times down to
the present, a broad liberal education for a small group of the best students.
These students would then be expected during their last two years to follow
the honors program now in use at Virginia, with some modifications and
improvements as desirable.1
Although some of his facts were wrong, Aydelotte believed that Virginia had
tremendous potential, particularly if it instituted the full Virginia Plan. He
proffered that: “If the faculty of the University of Virginia build upon the
foundations which have been so well laid the result will be an outstanding
example of the possibility of the adaptation of the honors idea to the conditions
of a state university.”2
Why was Aydelotte such a booster of the Virginia Plan? Like Barr, Buchanan,
and Gooch, Aydelotte had been a Rhodes Scholar. At Oxford he had observed
“the intellectually stimulating practice of separating honors students from pass
students” Later, as the president of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania,
Aydelotte, with $4 million from the General Education Board, made the college
the first to inaugurate an honors program and have it endure. The honors
program started in 1922 at Swarthmore was not the first attempt at such a
program. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and other institutions had all
tried various honors programs before World War I, but “these early programs
were denied the necessary commitment and resources” to make them work.
These attempts, however meager, had nevertheless as historian Frederick
Rudolph put it, “provided a clear challenge to the idea of the undergraduate
college as a democracy of equals” 3
In Aydelotte’s conception of it, the honors idea was based on the belief that
abler students need a more “severe course of instruction.” When compared to
135
the regular course of instruction, the work for honors students “must be different;
it must not only be harder but must also offer more freedom and responsibility,
more scope for the development of intellectual independence and initiative.”
Without such a regimen, argued Aydelotte:
The academic system as ordinarily administered is for [the] better and
more ambitious students a kind of lock step: it holds them back, wastes
their time, and blunts their interest by subjecting them to a slow moving
routine which they do not need. It causes, furthermore, the atrophy of the
qualities of independence and initiative in more gifted individuals by
furnishing too little opportunity for their exercise.4
Aydelotte was also arguing specifically that his own time, 1944, was of critical
importance to higher education since liberal education had been pushed aside
by the training and vocational demands of wartime and the preceding
Depression. In short, “If our liberal education is to meet the needs of the postwar
world we must clarify its aims and improve its quality.”5 Because this was the
case, argued Aydelotte, “we must break the lock step of the course and hour
system if we are to give our students of varying levels of ability a training which
will develop adequately the powers of each.” In order to accomplish this,
American institutions of higher learning had to look to the “Anglo-Saxon” model
rather than the continental model, because “the English universities have long
ago faced and solved this problem” by setting up a system whereby one receives
either a pass degree or an honors degree.6
Inaugurated under Aydelotte, the Swarthmore honors program for
upperclassmen, like those that followed it, relied on the English tradition of
giving the better students far greater freedom in their academic work, under
the guidance of a tutor, and requiring written and oral examinations at the end
of the senior year. This pattern, argued Aydelotte, removed the better American
student from the standard American academic requirements which “are too
much concerned with processes, assuming that if the student goes through the
motions, he will get an education.”7
Much of the Swarthmore program was replicated at other institutions and,
as seen earlier, at Virginia starting in 1937. Honors work during the last two
undergraduate years at Swarthmore was divided into four parts which
corresponded to the four semesters allotted, and was conducted seminar style.
Attendance at regular courses during this time was entirely voluntary. No
examinations were conducted until the end of the senior or fourth year when
honors students had to complete written and oral final comprehensive exams,
conducted by outside examiners.8 In the seminars carried out over the two
years, work was divided into weekly topics. During the two-hour weekly
seminar meetings the students and the tutor discussed their common readings
for that week. Student papers, each on a different aspect of the week’s topic,
were also read and discussed.9
Great Plans, Modest Accomplishments • 137
One significant difference between the Swarthmore and Virginia conceptions

of honors work was group versus individual tutoring. Regarding the use of
seminars over individual tutorials, Aydellotte wrote that:
Our faculty decided for several reasons that honors instruction could more
feasibly be given at Swarthmore in seminars than in individual tutorials.
For one thing, the American professor knows how to conduct a seminar
and he has not ordinarily had experience in the fine art of individual tutorial
work. Furthermore, the informal discussions in the seminar we have found
enormously stimulating to the students concerned. The seminar, in
addition, is a convenient means of training young members of the Faculty
to conduct Honors work, and it tends to some extent to protect the student
against a poor tutor.10
This mode of instruction was a significant pedagogical difference from the
practice at Virginia, where the individual tutorial was favored. Because
Swarthmore conducted honors instruction in seminar form, that is, four or five
students per tutor, students as a rule did not have individual instruction. Each
seminar was also conducted in a “field,” as opposed to a department. Students
at Swarthmore generally selected a primary subject that was complemented by
one or two additional subjects. According to Aydelotte, common combinations
included: “English Literature, English History, and Philosophy; Economics,
History, and Political Science; Mathematics, Astronomy, and Physics; [and]
Physiology, Zoology, and Chemistry.”11
Honors students at Virginia, by contrast, usually had individual instruction
within a single department. This did not mean that students could not study
subjects outside of their department. Students were admitted to honors work
in more than one department, but all the relevant departments had to
recommend, and the Committee on Honors Courses had to approve, such a
course of study.12 This meant that honors work at Virginia was conducted within
a departmental structure, not a “field” structure as at Swarthmore.
As for pedagogy, the one-on-one mode of tutorial instruction was favored
at Virginia because it was thought to be the most effective, but this mode was
not exclusive. Writing in 1960, the chairman of the Committee on Honors
Courses, David Yalden-Thomson of the Philosophy Department, offered the
following:
A plausible criticism…is that in some, or all, subjects something can be
accomplished in seminars which cannot be achieved either in tutorials or
lectures, namely, the benefits of directed discussions among intelligent
students. To a limited extent there is some seminar work, for some tutors
in some Departments, e.g., Economics, Political Science, and Philosophy
occasionally take two, three, or four tutorial students at the same time in
order to promote exchanges of ideas….
While acknowledging the possible strengths of seminar instruction,

YaldenThomson argued that there were advantages to individual tutorial
instruction as well:
All who have experience of tutoring or of being tutored are aware of the
way in which individual Honors students vary in their responses to
working jointly with other Honors students, whether in tutorials or
seminars. Some students welcome, say, a joint tutorial with one other
student of similar intellectual capacities, while others object to such a
procedure.13
In short, the Honors Program at Virginia was set up so that benefits could be
derived from both forms of instruction.
Virginia’s honors program drew praise from Aydelotte as seen below in his
summary comments. In particular, his synopsis gives an excellent overview of
how Virginia’s honors system worked in 1944, seven years after its inception.
It is difficult for large institutions to experiment, to follow any but

welltrodden paths, and particularly difficult to persuade state legislators
to appropriate funds for a program of this type, limited to the few, when
they find it hard enough to supply the needs of the many. Under these
circumstances it is all the more creditable that honors plans are in operation
in a number of our stronger state institutions and that two at least, Virginia
and Ohio, have taken positions of leadership in the movement. The
admirable program at the University of Virginia…replaces entirely the
course and hour system in the Junior and Senior years….
The University [of Virginia] is one of the oldest and most conservative
of our state institutions and not one of the richest. These facts make it all
the more remarkable that Virginia should have developed an honors plan
which, while it does not affect all departments (or schools, as they are
called in Jefferson’s phrase) and reaches as yet only a small proportion
of the student body, is nevertheless thoroughgoing and well conceived.
There is a regulation which permits groups of two or more schools or
departments to combine to formulate an honors program, but this has not
as yet been acted on in practice. On the other hand, the word “subject” is
broadly used and may embrace the field of more than one school or
department. Thus, an honors program sponsored by one department may
involve a request by the department to a professor in another to give the
student concerned tutorial instruction….
Virginia has made the conditions for entering honors work extremely
severe, seeking quality rather than numbers. The chairman of the honors
committee studies the records of the students in their second year in the
University to determine the high-standing men. Those interested in honors
work are invited to an informal interview with the chairman and on the
twofold basis of academic record and personal qualifications, honors
students are chosen.
A plan of study for the Junior and Senior years is made out by the
major department in consultation with the student and this plan must
receive the approval of the faculty committee on degrees with honors.
Once accepted the plan becomes both the basis for the student’s work
and a guide for setting his final comprehensive examination. There is
some difference between departments as to the scope of honors work.
The method of teaching is usually by individual tutorials, although here
also procedure varies. Final examinations are set by outside examiners
or by members of the Virginia faculty who have had no part in teaching
the student who is being examined. They include both written papers and
an oral.
All degrees with honors must be recommended to the faculty by the
honors committee. Some member of the committee follows closely the
examination of each student, the reports of the examiners in all
departments are considered, and after careful discussion degrees are
recommended. The plan seems to have been admirably thought out in all
its details. It is carefully administered by the Committee on Degrees with
Honors rather than by departments, and its prospects of success are all
the brighter for the fact that the number of students in the early years has
been small so that every problem and every difficulty could receive
individual attention.14
While Virginia’s honors program had been in place from 1937 and throughout
the war, Aydelotte’s commentary indicates that Virginia’s role in the liberal
arts movement had resulted in the University attracting national attention as
educators began to investigate curricular models for the post-war era.
This attention was significant because a second wave of general education
reform followed World War II. Just as war had precipitated the first “revival”
and a quest for social integration after World War I, so too the second revival
was spurred on by war and the perceived need to strengthen Western
democratic values against communism.15 Particularly noteworthy at that time
was the 1945 Harvard report General Education in a Free Society, known as
the “Red Book.” It won praise for articulating the importance and goals of
general education, and it also provided considered reflection on the various
proposals regarding general education made up to that time. It did not,
however, provide a compelling program to provide an “over-all logic, some
strong, not easily broken frame” for general education and it was ultimately
rejected at Harvard, though it served as a model at other institutions.16
Ultimately no national consensus emerged during this second period of
general education reform, save that some amount of it was deemed desirable
to counter communism and undesirable aspects of curricular atomization,

vocationalism, and professionalism. 17 The revival was slowed by the
technocratic concerns raised by Sputnik and eventually halted by the student
movement of the late 1960s with its calls for relevance and rejection of
prescriptions of all kinds.

Curriculum Committees Without End
Just as Aydelotte believed that a thorough-going examination of liberal education
was necessary if it were to fulfill its vital role in the post-war era, so too the
faculty and administration of the University of Virginia believed that wartime
necessitated a reconsideration of liberal education at Mr. Jefferson’s University.
One statement on the curriculum at that time, probably written by President
Newcomb, claimed, “in these days of War, when so much emphasis must be
rightly given to education for the development and use of technical skills, there
is widespread fear among many leaders in the field of liberal education that in
the postwar world the cause of liberal education may suffer greatly.” In order
to preserve liberal learning “the Arts and Sciences must indeed find a common
meeting-ground in the colleges of the future.” As for the arts:
Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, constituting the cultural core of the Greek
tradition and representing the ideas toward which the spiritual
development of western civilization has tended for twenty-five centuries,
inspired and ennobled by the social gospel of nineteen hundred years of
Christian influence, will always have a firm and lasting place in any
program of liberal education. Without such ideals to inspire and lead man
on, civilization would lose its impetus and man his dream of noble living.
Such ideals have given us the finest that man has to treasure in the world
of art, music, painting, sculpture, and great literature. No program of
education can afford to neglect them. They form the basis of the art of
living in its truest sense. To foster them in our halls of learning is to foster
the Arts—the humanistic core or tradition.18
At the same time, and in harmony with the place that Buchanan argued for
mathematics and the sciences in the Virginia Plan, this Virginia curriculum
statement also argued the necessity of mathematics and science:
Those who preserve the humanistic tradition must not forget that there are
others who labor wisely and long to discover and preserve the
instrumentalities that make our civilization possible. Technical achievement
is just as much a part of our American tradition as is the humanistic lore
that wise men have bequeathed to us. He is not liberally educated who
champions one tradition and neglects the other. Liberal education, in
bringing the Arts and Sciences together in fact as well as in theory, will
become a finer, richer type of education…. The Arts and Sciences must
become one in purpose and spirit for the enrichment of mankind.19
In response, during the 1940s the University established no fewer than seven
different committees to consider the institution’s curriculum. In addition to
seemingly constant self-evaluation, these committees also solicited material
from other institutions that were making changes, including Chicago’s plans
from 1931 and 1942, the 1945 Harvard Redbook, Columbia’s plans in 1946,
and Princeton’s in 1947.
In December 1943 the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences authorized
a Special Committee on Curriculum “to consider and report to it desirable
changes in the curriculum of the College, its methods of instruction, and its
requirements for graduation.” The committee undertook its task during the
following year and in January 1945 it recommended that each student should
take a year-long course in “Oral and Written Expression,” pass a proficiency
exam in elementary mathematics, demonstrate proficiency in a foreign
language, and take at least one course in each of the following areas: the exact
sciences, the natural sciences, history, the social studies, literature, the fine
arts, music, speech and drama, and philosophy.20
In the interim, the University’s Post-War College Committee, with Dean of
the College Ivey F.Lewis serving as chairman, also issued a report that
emphasized the special importance of liberal education. The committee asserted
in its August 1944 report that a liberal education:
...is the very kind of education which enables one most effectively to
adjust himself to the demands of change. This it does by giving him the
capacity for adjustment to his environment. Liberal education so enriches
one’s mind that he is not dependent upon Hollywood or Radio City or
the swank Country Club for relief from boredom. It seeks to give its
beneficiary the capacity for adjustment to whatever circumstances may
surround him rather than to train him for the performance of some specific
task which he may never be called on to perform or which may be rendered
obsolete and useless by scientific invention or technological
advancement.21
While recognizing that the construction of a new curriculum “has been the
subject of study by another committee,” the post-war committee suggested that
“the scope and content of the first two years of college work be more coherently
defined than has been done in the past and that a central core of subject matter
considered as the necessary equipment of all educated persons should be
prescribed for the first two years.”22
This course of reasoning followed the same logic used in the Virginia Plan,
that is, that the underclass years be spent in a prescribed course of study,
although now the recommendation was that all students should follow this
regimen. The Virginia Plan’s philosophy is seen even more strongly in the
postwar committee’s judgment that “the reorganized liberal arts subjects shall
in the future, as in the past, constitute the essential core of the college curriculum
and that the chief aim of the college should be to develop a well planned,
carefully articulated liberal arts course of study.”23
A third report was generated by the standing Committee on Academic
Legislation in September 1944, several months before the report by the Special
Committee on the Curriculum, and one month after the release of the report of
the Post-War Committee. To the degree requirements for the B.A., which had
been revised in 1935, the Committee recommended that designated courses in
each of the following be added: English and American literature; history; and
economics, political science, or sociology.24 This recommendation was rejected
by the faculty and a new group, the “Balz Committee,” was established to
consider curriculum issues further. Under Albert Balz, chairman of the
Philosophy department and a supporter of the Virginia Plan honors program
established in 1937, this subsequent committee took a different tack. It made
two assumptions: “a) that students who have had the advantages of excellent
training in secondary schools should not be held back by their less fortunate
comrades and b) that all students must possess a knowledge of certain
fundamental subjects before being admitted to courses in which such knowledge
is taken for granted.” Through a proposed system of advanced standing
determined by examinations that placed students in “precandidacy” and
“candidacy” statuses, students of different preparations and abilities could
proceed through their undergraduate education at different rates and at different
levels. In spite of the proposed variability, “the faculty was to have much greater
control than heretofore over the election of courses by all students since the
committee felt that eighteen-year-old boys can scarcely arrange a well-
integrated program for themselves.” The Balz Committee report was submitted
to the Committee on Academic Legislation, which approved it, but it too was
subsequently rejected by the faculty.25
Somehow the faculty, unsatisfactorily it would turn out, determined to revise
the B.A. requirements in 1945. Compared to the 1935 curriculum, the new one
was more prescribed. The required number of English credit hours was doubled.
A year-long required course in history was added. The other requirements
remained the same, except that Greek and Latin were no longer required.26
No sooner were these changes made than additional curricular revisions
were considered. Two new committees, perhaps chastened by the experiences
of the previous ones, strove to find a balance in their recommendations between
too much prescription and electivism. The new Curriculum Committee on
Requirements did not propose to abolish the elective system, but was “convinced
of the wisdom of exerting considerable control over the student’s election of
courses.” As a result, the Committee members suggested that their
recommendations did not “establish some radically new conception” of

bachelor’s education.27
A more vigorous statement for finding a middle ground came out of yet
another group, “The Committee of Ten,” which argued in 1946 that liberal
education had been displaced by “an uncoordinated hybrid” that threatened
“the extinction of liberal education.” The Committee observed that:
many have proposed abandoning the liberal courses entirely; some have
insisted on over-specialization in one field and have thus neglected liberal
studies. The result of such proposals would give greater emphasis to the
specialist who, more often than not, tends to have little knowledge of
problems beyond his field, or to have little interest in them. At any rate,
such a specialist is apt to view the rest of the world chiefly in the light of
his own specialty.28
Although concerned about overspecialization, this Committee also rejected the

traditional liberal arts philosophy:
Others who look critically at modern education move in an opposite

direction. They seek to return to the strictest academic orthodoxy, to revert
to the historical seven-fold principles of liberal education. Coming from
the period of decline of the Roman Empire, these were not originally
intended to suggest those ideas of freedom from ignorance and prejudice
which is the usual implication of liberal education today. Instead they
suggested the accomplishments which befitted a “free man”—free in the
sense of being a member of the privileged aristocracy rather than of being
a slave. And although this original conception has been greatly broadened,
its influence can still be felt among those who seem to believe that liberal
education is merely designed to impart certain intellectual graces for their
own sake. Such a point of view seems to us as sterile as the modern
formless and over-specialized education is unbalanced and misleading.29
The Committee of Ten thus recommended a required curriculum that consisted

of English, methods of critical analysis, economics, government, science, art,
mathematics, history, foreign language, English and American literature, and
what the committee members referred to as a “Fourth Year Tie-Up Course”
which, in the tradition of the old moral philosophy course of the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, would provide “an opportunity to seek answers to
some of the broader questions raised during [the student’s] four years of study.”
This course, in a modern twist, would also “afford the student the chance to
exchange views and information with those concentrating in other fields.” As
to method, the committee suggested that greater attention needed to be paid to
life outside the classroom; that although the underclass years were the most
important, all four years of college should be given over to liberal learning, not
specialization; and finally that instruction should as much as possible be done
in small groups.30
These further recommendations came to naught. But that did not mean that
the current curriculum, just revised in 1945, was considered acceptable. In his
1947 Annual Report, for example, Virginia’s new President, Colgate Darden,
noted that:
Study of the curriculum best adapted to give a broad but sound training
for the responsibilities of citizenship has continued without interruption
for some years…. Within the framework of a program for liberal education
a number of new courses have been added. It is interesting to note that
the historical approach to mastery of a subject, so strongly urged by
President Conant of Harvard, has been adopted in the Schools of
Astronomy, Biology, History, and Psychology. The School of Philosophy
has always used this approach.31
The upshot of all these considerations was the faculty’s determination that a
more capacious approach to the study of liberal education reform was necessary.
Accordingly, “The Liberal Arts Committee” was formed in 1947 by a “weary”
faculty.32 Unlike the previous committees, mercifully the Liberal Arts Committee
was relieved of the responsibility of suggesting specific curricular revisions.
The Committee instead saw its charge as “the stimulation of interest in basic
principles and fundamental policy” for the college curriculum. Along these
lines, rather than issue a formal plan, the Committee decided to issue a bulletin
“to keep before the Faculty one of the most important problems that faces the
College today,” that is, “the problem of liberal education.”33
Over the next four years the Liberal Arts Committee provided periodic
bulletins which related information the members felt would be useful to the
broader faculty’s consideration of liberal education. Examinations of liberal
education reforms at numerous institutions were offered, including Dartmouth,
Yale, Washington & Lee, Princeton, Wisconsin, Buffalo, Harvard, Amherst,
and others. Summaries were then published and distributed since “it should be
of value to consider what others are thinking and doing.”34 Additionally,
studentfaculty relations were reviewed. General observations were also offered
as to the objectives and methods of liberal education. In the end, the Committee
argued of liberal education at Virginia that “first we must decide which, if any,
of the stated objectives of liberal education are to be ours. Then, we must
decide how much we are willing to discommode ourselves to achieve these.
Then, and only then, will we be in a position to start juggling semester-hours.”35
At this point, however, events associated with St. John’s and the “liberal artists”
again entered the Virginia story; consequently consideration now turns to events
in Annapolis before continuing with the developments in Charlottesville.
Liberal Arts, Incorporated

As noted earlier, World War II had shifted the focus away from liberal education
reforms for a few years as the necessities of more specialized training to support
the Allied effort became paramount. The war’s approaching conclusion
prompted renewed consideration throughout academia of what best constituted
a proper undergraduate education. Barr and Buchanan believed that their new
program at St. John’s College, which was based on the great books part of the
Virginia Plan, was the answer—although they were increasingly convinced that
Annapolis was an inauspicious location for the program. Throughout the war
St. John’s had been wrangling with the United States Navy which had tried,
and almost succeeded, in claiming the St. John’s campus for expansion of the
Naval Academy. Because of the experience, Barr and Buchanan became
convinced that the future of their great books program would never be safe in
Annapolis, despite the fact that the end of the war in 1945 drastically diminished
the legitimacy of the Navy’s claim.36
Then in 1946 a pledge from philanthropist Paul Mellon’s Old Dominion
Foundation provided a chance to safeguard the program. In his autobiography,
Reflections in a Silver Spoon, Mellon recorded that in 1940 he had read an
article by Walter Lippmann praising St. John’s. He drove from his family estate,
“Oak Spring,” in Upperville, Virginia, to Annapolis to meet with Barr and
offer financial support for the program.37 Mellon was so intrigued, however,
that he decided to enroll, even though he was fourteen years older than the
incoming freshmen. In a letter to a friend at that time Mellon stated:
I have been interested in many general aspects of education ever since
my own undergraduate days at Yale and at Cambridge. About a year ago
I learned of the St. John’s College program, and was immediately
impressed by its soundness. I felt that it might be the answer as a much-
needed departure from the usual higher educational forms and methods
in this country. In the meantime, after several visits to the College in
Annapolis and several interesting conversations with the men responsible
for the new program in the College, plus a thorough study of the curriculum
itself, I decided that I would like to see the experiment actually in
operation, from day to day. I believe in it enough to want to become a
part of it, rather than read about it or hear about it, second hand….38
Mellon’s decision to enroll reflected the argument of the liberal artists that
first-hand exposure was the best—why read what someone else has said when
you can read the original—or, in this case, why hear about the program when
you can take it yourself? Mellon stuck with the program, which gave him
difficulty (especially mathematics), for about six months before registering for
the draft and serving in World War II.
The war ended in the summer of 1945 and in 1946 Mellon wrote to Barr that:
Ever since last June I have been interested in setting up an initial

endowment for the St. John’s Program. I have been deterred from action
by doubts as to whether St. John’s College could keep its campus. I have
felt that if it could not, it might be more in the interest of American
education to find a stronger institutional vehicle to develop the educational
program which you initiated at St. John’s.
I am therefore placing at the disposal of the Old Dominion Foundation
securities currently producing an income of $125,000 per annum, which
may be used for the purpose of developing the type of education now
carried on at St. John’s College for other similar purposes. I am
instructing the Trustees of the Foundation that they may rely on your
personal judgment as to whether St. John’s can be expected to preserve
the campus or whether some other college you may designate will better
carry out my intention and thereby become the beneficiary of these
funds.39
Later Mellon agreed to contribute a total of $4.5 million to endow a great books
program, either at St. John’s or at another institution.40 Mellon had been wary
of the Navy’s ultimate intentions. Barr recalled that upon suggesting to Mellon
that he, Barr, “get a statement by the Navy that they don’t want [St. John’s]”
Mellon replied: “Winkie, the next Congress could change it. There’s no way
you can get it with a stick.”41 Barr later recalled that “I was finding it difficult to
get financial support, because everybody thought the ax was going to drop—
no time to give money to a college when it may disappear.” As a result, “I
thought we ought to try and find some other place.”42
Because of their reservations regarding Annapolis, Barr and Buchanan—
through a corporation set up with Hutchins, Adler, Van Doren, and others called
Liberal Arts, Incorporated—determined instead to use the Mellon money to
establish a new liberal arts institution like St. John’s at the former Hanna estate
in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. As Hutchins wryly wrote to Alexander
Meiklejohn in October 1946, “Winkie [Barr] and Scott [Buchanan] are coming
here next week and we are going to found a new university. We will keep you
informed.”43 The Hanna property, it was originally thought, had enough existing
buildings and unoccupied land to accommodate the immediate and future needs
of the new institution. The new college was to be nondenominational and have
a maximum of about 300 students and a faculty of thirty.44 By this time Barr,
Buchanan, and probably Mellon, were convinced that the future of their program
would never be safe in Annapolis, in spite of the fact that, in a letter written in
June 1946, James V.Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, had stated that a decision
by the House Naval Affairs Committee made it possible “for the college to
pursue its plans with assurance that it will be secure on its historic site for the
foreseeable future.”45 Barr recalled “I thought it was stupid to think there will
be [St. John’s in] Annapolis [given] the Navy’s preference…. Life is too short
to be threatened for the rest of it, and we had all our hands full, and I think it
would have made a great deal of sense to have moved up there [to
Stockbridge].”46
Stockbridge also made sense to Barr because Buchanan had over the past
year been loosening his ties to St. John’s and Barr knew Buchanan would
eventually leave the college. Winfree Smith argued that Buchanan’s increasing
withdrawal from St. John’s was manifest by Buchanan’s assumption of adult
education duties in Washington D.C. in 1945 and his year-long leave of absence
from the College effective June 1946. This change in Buchanan’s attentions
meant that Barr, who earnestly wanted Buchanan’s help with their educational
endeavors, knew that their work could not continue in Annapolis. Because of
the battle with the Navy and Buchanan’s increasing withdrawal from his
deanship, Barr decided in his capacity as advisor to the Old Dominion
Foundation to use the Mellon money to support the Stockbridge endeavor
instead of St. John’s.
Although Hutchins, Adler, and Van Doren all “helped sponsor the effort” to
create Liberal Arts, Incorporated in November 1946, none of them would leave
their respective positions to join Barr and Buchanan in Massachusetts.47 Indeed,
neither would McKeon or Meiklejohn, nor would any of the faculty or board
members of St. John’s. To all of these individuals the prospects for the
Massachusetts endeavor looked bleak.48 Only a few years earlier in 1937 St.
John’s had seemed doomed to failure—Hutchins had advised Barr and
Buchanan not to take up the struggling college. But the St. John’s risks looked
mild compared to the Stockbridge proposal; that “college” did not even exist.
It was highly unlikely that Hutchins, the President, McKeon, a Dean, and Adler,
a full professor, would have been willing to resign from the University of
Chicago, one of the most prestigious institutions in the country, to pursue such
a risky venture; and in the end they did not. Buchanan wrote that everyone
they had counted on had let them down. Further he and Barr believed that
while nobody wanted to commit to the Stockbridge project each person they
had tried to involve thought “it would be a fine thing for someone else to do.”49
Adding to their Massachusetts woes, Barr and Buchanan, through Liberal
Arts, Incorporated—and in what Buchanan later referred to as “a fit of personal
generosity”—had agreed that St. John’s would receive $150,000 for the period
between January 1947 and July 1948 from the Mellon endowment, thereby
reducing significantly the annual money available for Stockbridge, which was
to open in September 1948.50 They had also broadened their plans to have not
only a new liberal arts college in Stockbridge but also a graduate school,
“devoted to the search for the unity of knowledge and wisdom, which would
continually discover and revise what all men should know,” and an adult
education program, “which would continue the liberal arts for the rest of the
student’s life.”51 In addition to staffing problems, the expanded plans made the
funding question of critical importance. The Mellon gift would have thrown
significant operating money to St. John’s, but it became clear that it was entirely
insufficient to establish a new college in Massachusetts. Also, Mellon had
wanted to endow the program at St. John’s or at a college like it, not create a
new university, and thus in the end he was unwilling to support the Stockbridge
venture. The lack of funds, and the unwillingness of friends, faculty, or board
members to join Barr and Buchanan because the venture appeared too risky,
combined with Mellon’s ultimate refusal to support the effort, resulted in the
demise of the Stockbridge endeavor in August 1947.
In spite of this outcome, Paul Mellon’s interest in the St. John’s Program
proved essential to its long-term vitality. Rejecting the “dynastic” desire of his
father, Andrew W.Mellon, that he have a career with the Mellon Bank, Paul
Mellon instead became a life-long philanthropist who distributed personally
and through foundations, over six hundred million dollars. From 1941 until
1969, when it became part of the Andrew W.Mellon Foundation, Paul Mellon’s
Old Dominion Foundation—named for the Commonwealth of Virginia—
dispersed grants to the arts, education, conservation and preservation, psychiatry
and religion, science, and a few general charities, such as the Red Cross. Old
Dominion’s grants, which totaled over eighty-six million dollars, were, as
Mellon put it, “not intended to be full and continuing support for its recipients,
but rather to encourage new ventures when they were most in need of
assistance.”52
Substantial assistance was provided to St. John’s by the Old Dominion
Foundation during the 1940s, 50s, and 60s to help underwrite the College’s
substantial deficit and allow it to build an endowment capable of offsetting the
annual deficits. At the same time, perhaps because of the funding problems in
Annapolis, Mellon and Old Dominion had “misgivings” about St. John’s plans
in the late 1950s to open a second campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Mellon’s
same reluctance to start a college from scratch had appeared in the Stockbridge
venture. Nevertheless, Mellon was very generous toward St. John’s. He and
the Old Dominion Foundation eventually contributed in excess of twelve million
dollars to St. John’s in the form of campaign support, building funds, general
support, pledged support, and endowment.53 Yet Mellon was also cautious, as
shown by his unwillingness to support the Stockbridge college or, as will be
seen, to turn over the four and a half million dollars in endowment to Liberal
Arts, Incorporated after Barr and Buchanan left St. John’s in 1947.
Barr, Darden, and Mellon

Although the overly ambitious Stockbridge endeavor was crumbling in early
1947, Mellon was nevertheless deeply interested in supporting the creation of
a St. John’s type program at the University of Virginia. Mellon’s estate was
located in Virginia and he had a strong desire to support the Commonwealth,
including its educational institutions, with his philanthropy. Coincidentally,
Colgate Darden, the new president of the University, wanted badly to improve
the quality of the education offered at Charlottesville. During the spring of
1947, the same time that the Stockbridge endeavor was foundering, Darden
and Bob Gooch had made promising overtures to Barr and Mellon regarding
the possibility of furnishing “the St. John’s type of education” at the University
of Virginia.54 As an advisor to Mellon’s Old Dominion Foundation and president
of Liberal Arts, Incorporated, Barr once again cast his eyes toward
Charlottesville.
How all of these developments came together, and their outcome, is a
complicated and perhaps forever incomplete story, but much of what transpired
can be ascertained by piecing together the extant evidence. As noted earlier,
throughout the 1940s multiple committees at Virginia had considered the nature
of the challenges that would confront the university in the years following the
war. The committees at Virginia believed that liberal arts education was critical
and yet lacking at Virginia; indeed, according to Ivey F.Lewis who was the
Dean of the College and the chairman of the Committee on the Post-War
College, the committee members “spent more time on this problem than on all
the rest of the questions we discussed.”55 The extent of their efforts is revealed
by the fact that these committees actively solicited information from numerous
institutions, including Columbia, Chicago, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and
Swarthmore, on the general education reforms made at those institutions.
Many at the university were also keen on Barr’s work at St. John’s. In fact,
when John Newcomb had announced that he would step down from Virginia’s
presidency in 1946, Stringfellow Barr had been one of the leading candidates
for the position. Of the four men nominated for president by Harry Clemons,
the University Librarian, two were Stringfellow Barr and Robert Gooch.
Similarly, Robert Gooch’s nomination letter stated that the next president of
the University needed the following characteristics: “(1) genuine scholarly
interests and attainments; (2) educational leadership; (3) institutional loyalty;
(4) administrative capacity. I know of no one who possesses this combination
in the same degree as President F.S.Barr, St. John’s College….” In a letter to
Dean Lewis, Allan Gwathmey of the Chemistry Department stated that Colgate
Darden was his first choice: “He is a man of vision, and able administrator, the
recognized leader in the state, and one who has an appreciation of the overall
problems in Virginia.” But Barr was Gwathmey’s second choice:
F.Stringfellow Barr is unquestionably one of the great and acknowledged
leaders of education in America. It is unnecessary to dwell on his
background and his personal charm. He has a passionate love for the
University of Virginia, although the University has often failed to
appreciate him. In my opinion, the criticism often offered that he is too
radical and too fiery is absurd. He is more than a man with just a pet
theory of undergraduate education. I feel that he would, and should, insist
on the opportunity to experiment in education, but there would not be the

slightest chance of him disrupting the University in an undignified manner
on behalf of some special theory of education. I am sure that Barr would
accept the position only if a strong personal appeal were made to him to
accept the leadership of education in Virginia, and if he were allowed the
opportunity to experiment with academic units within the University. I
should most certainly welcome such experiments.56
Robert Gooch, “a true scholar, gentleman, and athlete” and also “a profound
student of modern education” was Gwathmey’s third choice.57 In the end former
governor Colgate Darden, both despite and because of his connections with the
state house in Richmond, was determined the favorite of the faculty and the
choice of the Board of Visitors, but these letters show that Barr was definitely
held in high esteem at the University in 1946. Some of this interest reflected the
pressing need to improve the academic quality of the university.
The Virginia Option

One possible way to spur this improvement developed in April 1947. On the 25th
of that month Buchanan and Barr met with Mellon and other officers of the Old
Dominion Foundation in Washington D.C. to discuss the difficulties facing the
Stockbridge endeavor. At that meeting Barr made it known that their old colleague
from Virginia, Bob Gooch, wanted to use the upcoming change in administration
in Charlottesville to bring the great books program to the University of Virginia,
where it had first been conceived. Buchanan had strongly advised Barr to authorize
Gooch to take up the matter with incoming president Colgate Darden. As Buchanan
put it in a May letter to Meiklejohn, “Bob Gooch, a member of the Committee at
the University which made the first formulation of the program, a very influential
fellow there where no influence is at all strong, has talked to Darden and he is
very much interested in getting Winkie to bring the program there.”58
Barr noted that Mellon seized on this possibility “with great avidity” and
within days Barr and Gooch met with Mellon at Upperville to discuss the
Virginia option. Gooch claimed Darden was enthusiastic. Mellon was likewise
enthusiastic about the possibility, so much so that all other options were
postponed until the Virginia option could be explored. On May 7, 1947, Barr,
Buchanan, Darden, and Gooch met in New York to discuss the possibilities.
Barr found Darden to be “boyishly enthusiastic” about both the St. John’s
program and of it serving “as a possible means of awakening the University
from its long lethargy.”59
Several weeks later, Barr sent a politically astute, if perhaps somewhat
disingenuous, letter to Darden in which he stated his interest “on my part in
your warm invitation to Scott Buchanan and me to bring the St. John’s Program
to the University.” Barr continued: “I was so interested in the subject of our
conference when I last saw you that I think I failed to tell you how confidently
I look forward to your administration of the affairs of the University—regardless

of whether it should seem wise for us to join forces. So much that is good and
that is important for Virginia and for the rest of the Country could happen at
the University but has not yet happened.”60
In spite of his letter to Darden, however, Barr came away from their meeting
unconvinced that Virginia was the best option for several reasons. One was his
continuing concern, as had been the case with president Newcomb in 1937,
that enthusiasm in Charlottesville was as much about Barr and Buchanan as it
was about the great books program. Barr confided to Alexander Meiklejohn
that Darden and Gooch were “I fear equally enthusiastic about getting Scott
and me ‘home’ again.”61 Barr was also unsure that Darden would provide the
necessary leadership to allow the program to thrive at Virginia. Fresh from
government and new to academia, Darden, as had been the case with Newcomb
in 1936, might not do what was necessary to implement and safeguard the
program. Barr did not want mere possibilities in Charlottesville—they had
had those before—he wanted assurances. In Annapolis the threat had been an
acquisitive Navy. In Charlottesville Barr believed that lack of presidential
leadership might ultimately be a fatal problem. Barr was also probably unnerved
by Mellon’s interest in the University of Virginia because he—Barr—still
wanted to work out the program in Stockbridge. Because of these concerns
Barr determined that, “after careful reflection I considered Charlottesville too
soft to recommend.”62
Barr’s Proposals to Mellon

Barr wrote to Mellon in May 1947 to relay his concerns about Virginia and to
let him know that he would not recommend the university as the beneficiary of
Mellon’s gift. The timing of the letter is critical in understanding Barr’s
reasoning. In mid-May 1947 the Stockbridge project was still alive, although
in serious trouble. In spite of the difficulties in attracting faculty and in securing
sufficient funds for the endeavor, to Barr and Buchanan the Stockbridge option
still seemed the most likely to be free of the type of difficulties that ostensibly
drove them from Annapolis, and deterred them from returning to Charlottesville.
Stockbridge would be entirely their own operation; Barr and Buchanan would
call all the shots. They would control the purse strings on the $4.5 million gift
from Mellon—$500,000 of which had already been used to buy the Stockbridge
property. They would have no interference from external or internal
constituencies. Unlike in Annapolis, there would be no Navy, and there would
be no leadership problems or existing faculty with which to haggle, as Barr
feared could be the case in Charlottesville. At Stockbridge the program of liberal
arts education would be entirely of their own design. It was also ambitious with
its tripartite organization of undergraduate college, graduate school, and adult
education in the liberal arts.
The lack of sufficient funds, especially building funds, for Stockbridge

was a real problem, but also a known one. By contrast the nature of the
relationship between Barr and Darden and their respective organizations
(Liberal Arts, Incorporated and the University of Virginia) was ambiguous.
As Buchanan wrote to Meiklejohn at that time, “the amorphous nature of the
University of Virginia is the puzzle we have to solve….”63 What form would
“the St. John’s type of education” take at Virginia? Who would make those
decisions? Who would control the money for the venture? Would it be
supported by the university, or beleaguered, or even subsumed? Unknown
but nevertheless possible problems at Charlottesville were certainly to be
avoided if possible. Clearly Barr and Buchanan wanted the freedom and the
responsibility, and perhaps the power and possible prestige, embodied in the
Stockbridge proposal. Stockbridge was a grand plan, and it was theirs alone.
Choosing to go join forces with Darden at the University of Virginia must
have seemed like a distant second-best. Also, Barr loved his alma mater, but
he knew Buchanan was unlikely to want to return to Charlottesville long-
term. Thus in mid-May 1947, Barr was still trying to make their plans for
Stockbridge come to fruition.
But Barr also knew that Stockbridge was in trouble, and doomed if Mellon
withdrew his support for it. With all of these considerations in mind, a
beleaguered Barr submitted three recommendations to Mellon, “(1) lying low
a bit until the skies cleared in terms of personnel and perhaps of building costs,
(2) going ahead immediately at Stockbridge providing [Mellon] could put up
a building fund or (3) calling it all off.” Barr also stated that if calling off the
Stockbridge plans seemed the wisest course of action, and if the Old Dominion
Foundation wanted to make the gift to Virginia in spite of Barr’s reluctance,
that “[Buchanan] and [Barr] were willing to go there at least for a bit and do
what could be done.”64
At this point Barr and Mellon found themselves with opposing views of
how best to precede. Barr recorded that Mellon “did not understand my doubts
about Charlottesville” and “made clear to me his doubts about Stockbridge.”
Mellon proposed another meeting for the two of them and Buchanan in
Washington D.C. on June 9th. Mellon made it clear at their meeting that he
would not put up any additional money for a building fund or anything else.
Yet Mellon was willing to consider, as Barr put it, “releasing a portion of his
gift to remodel and equip what we already possess at Stockbridge.”65
In spite of Mellon’s accommodation, the officers of the Old Dominion
Foundation were not willing to put any further funds toward Stockbridge. As
early as April the foundation officers had been unwilling to follow Barr’s
recommendations to do so. As Buchanan summarized the situation: “Even
[Mellon] could not trump them with his donor’s will.”66 Mellon consequently
wrote to Barr that he believed that further action in Stockbridge was impossible
and, as Barr saw it, “it was either Virginia or nothing.” At yet another meeting
in Washington D.C. on July 2nd, “[Mellon] opened the discussion by repeating

this ultimatum, although in a very friendly fashion.”67
With Mellon having determined that the Stockbridge project was finished,
the board members of Liberal Arts, Incorporated capitulated and decided to
develop proposals that would involve the University of Virginia and thus satisfy
Mellon’s and Old Dominion’s desire for an institutional mooring, and yet also
preserve as much autonomy and control for Liberal Arts, Incorporated as
possible. After all, $4 million was a large amount of money and Barr, Buchanan,
and the other board members of Liberal Arts were not eager to pass it on to
others at Virginia or elsewhere who might not have the same under-standing
of, or commitment to, their type of liberal arts education. President Newcomb’s
inability to secure funding, it will be recalled, was ostensibly what had scuttled
the plan to implement the underclassman great books scheme part of the Virginia
Plan at Virginia in 1936. With the Mellon millions tantalizingly close to their
hands, Barr and Buchanan were not about to jeopardize their plans. Stockbridge
might have been dead, but since Mellon was so interested in Virginia, they
endeavored to find a solution in Charlottesville.
Liberal Arts’ Proposals for Virginia

On July 17, 1947, Adler, Barr, Buchanan, Hutchins, and Van Doren met in
New York “and agreed that Barr and Hutchins should seek authorization of
Paul Mellon to make alternative proposals to Colgate Darden….” Darden’s
original proposal to Liberal Arts, Incorporated had been to have them fund
a St. John’s type of education at Virginia. As Barr had indicated earlier to
Mellon, this plan was problematic because it was apparently conceived by
Darden as more supplementary than revolutionary in nature. Darden wanted
to add such a program to Virginia’s offerings, not make over the college of
the University of Virginia in St. John’s image. Darden’s initial proposal
would have subsumed the liberal arts project; it would have been a means,
and not an end, at Virginia. Moreover perhaps the greatest appeal of the
Stockbridge project had been its autonomy. Barr and Buchanan, in their
view at least, would have been free to do what they wanted in Massachusetts,
and that included making their brand of liberal arts education the end—the
goal—of their institution at Stockbridge. When the Liberal Arts board
members met in New York that July day they sought to preserve that
independence in any potential Charlottesville plans.
Out of their deliberations came two proposals. One was to establish “a
completely autonomous college at the University [of Virginia] with [Mellon’s
$4 million] gift as endowment.” The second proposal was to “give three fourths
of the gift to the University of Virginia for the restricted purpose of teaching
the St. John’s Program there and giving the remaining fourth of the gift to
Liberal Arts, Inc.”68 The first proposal was relatively straightforward compared
to the second one. In the first, the college was not to be part of the University
of Virginia, but rather related to it. The St. John’s program would operate in
University of Virginia buildings with the Liberal Arts, Incorporated directors
as trustees. The second proposal to use $3 million for the new college and
direct the remaining $1 million to Liberal Arts, Incorporated was more
complicated. Three million would go to Darden “to work out the project in
Charlottesville with [Barr].” The other million would go “with no strings
attached, to Liberal Arts, Incorporated, to spend at their discretion in the
Berkshires or elsewhere ‘to promote the St. John’s type of education.’” Barr
noted in a letter to Meiklejohn that this option “would obviously include lending
me support at the University of Virginia” and that “I would be willing to tackle
Virginia if I knew I could count on Liberal Arts, Incorporated, to help me do
the things the Charlottesville red tape may prevent my doing.”69 This letter
shows Barr’s continuing concern that his endeavors might be hampered at
Virginia and he wanted to make sure that they would not be.
Armed with these two new proposals, Hutchins and Barr met with Mellon
on July 21, 1947 in New York. Mellon was “interested by both but not very
clear on the purposes of Liberal Arts, Incorporated, and hence not clear on the
uses to which it would put a million dollars in the event that only three million
went to Charlottesville.” Because the purpose of Liberal Arts, Incorporated
remained unclear, and consequently because the trustees of the Old Dominion
Foundation, and Mellon, were unlikely to approve directing $1 million of the
$4 million endowment to Liberal Arts, “Mellon stated that he thought it would
help a great deal if [Barr] could provide [Mellon] with a statement of the
purposes of Liberal Arts, Incorporated….” Barr recorded that “I undertook to
attempt such a statement.” However, his attempt must not have been persuasive.
Mellon immediately telephoned Donald Shepard, a lawyer and trustee of the
Old Dominion Foundation, to discuss the two proposals and while “Shepard
warmly approved $4,000,000 at Charlottesville [he] shivered at subtracting
from the gift $1,000,000 for Liberal Arts, Incorporated.”70
In retrospect, such reluctance was probably warranted as there is no
definitive record of what Liberal Arts, Incorporated planned to do with the $1
million. Probably some would have been earmarked for Barr at Virginia. Yet
in his letter of July 23, 1947 to the Non-Resident Board Members of Liberal
Arts, Incorporated, Barr noted that, while Mellon was conferring with Shepard
by phone, “I delivered to Mellon pro forma the written project for Stockbridge
showing estimates by reputable builders for remodeling the Hanna place… at
a total cost of $668,000, including $200,000 for equipment.”71 Apparently the
members of Liberal Arts, Incorporated still hoped to save Stockbridge, even
as they were developing proposals for Charlottesville. Regardless, it appears
that what Barr, Buchanan, and the other members of Liberal Arts really wanted
was to keep as much control over the money as possible. Control of the
money determined who controlled the outcome of events, and because of
their earlier experiences in Charlottesville and Annapolis, Barr and Buchanan

certainly wanted to avoid situations in which money and events were beyond
their control.
The other players in this tripartite power struggle, that is, Mellon and Old
Dominion, and Darden and the University of Virginia, likewise knew that with
the money went the power to determine the course of events. They were not
any more willing than Barr, Buchanan, and Liberal Arts, Incorporated to give
up that control until they were certain that their desired outcomes would be
achieved. The members of Liberal Arts were unable to give them those
assurances. As a result, the discussions between all parties remained difficult.
In the meantime, since he was interested in both of Liberal Arts’ proposals
for Charlottesville, Mellon did not want to wait for Old Dominon’s unlikely
approval of Liberal Arts’ second proposal before moving ahead. While there
would have to be further discussions with the Old Dominion Foundation regarding
the second proposal, Mellon and the trustees of Old Dominion liked Liberal
Arts’ first proposal to direct all $4 million to the proposed new college at the
University of Virginia. As Barr related to the Liberal Arts board members, “Mellon
urged that Darden be offered the alternatives involving Charlottesville.”72
Barr, Darden, and the Charlottesville Proposals

Within a week, Barr and Hutchins met with Darden and Gooch in Washington,
D.C. to discuss the two proposals for Charlottesville. Reflecting the collaboration
that had existed between them since the creation of the Virginia Plan Committee
in 1934, Barr recorded that Gooch “has been chiefly instrumental throughout
in urging the Virginia solution” to Liberal Arts’ search for an institutional
mooring for their liberal arts program. Barr and Hutchins laid out their two
proposals. Regarding the first proposal for an “autonomous college at the
University with [Mellon’s $4 million] gift as endowment,” Darden “stated that
the University would welcome the new college and he would do all in his power
to facilitate its coming.” Barr recorded further that:
[Darden] is prepared to purchase a 175 acre tract contiguous to the
university property for $150,000 and lease it to the new college. Although
it includes considerably fewer buildings than our Stockbridge property,
[Darden] is confident it could immediately house 60 students and he is
prepared to have the college use University [of Virginia] facilities,
including the library, classrooms and laboratories, athletics, medical
service, etc.73
Particularly appealing to Barr and Hutchins was that this solution, if it transpired,
would eliminate the vexing “building problem,” the lack of adequate classroom
and dormitory space that, along with inadequate funds and an inability to recruit
adequate staff, had hamstrung the Stockbridge proposal.
Darden was less happy with Liberal Arts’ second proposal “of giving
threefourths of the gift to the University of Virginia for the restricted purpose
of teaching the St. John’s Program there and giving the remaining fourth of
the gift to Liberal Arts, Inc.” Darden believed that the second proposal was a
“half-hearted and timid solution” that might well create an “ambiguous relation”
between Liberal Arts, Incorporated, and the University of Virginia. Instead,
Darden “suggested, as an alternative to placing a fourth of Mr. Mellon’s gift in
the hands of Liberal Arts, Incorporated, with a view to tempering the
bureaucratic impediments of a large university, the possibility of indicating in
the terms of the gift that one-fourth of the income was to be paid only on the
warrant of the Director of the ‘required curriculum’ in the present Department
of Arts and Sciences in the University.” 74 This solution was Darden’s
compromise attempt to remove Liberal Arts, Incorporated, from the picture,
but still afford Barr, who was most likely to be the “Director of the ‘required
curriculum,’” a fair amount of discretion over the Mellon funds. This comment
also suggests that Liberal Arts, Incorporated now hoped to use the $1 million
as insurance for their program, at least vis-a-vis the University of Virginia.
The meeting apparently produced cautious optimism in all parties, and Barr
agreed to visit Charlottesville to inspect the contiguous property that Darden
had offered for the new college. Before Barr’s visit, Darden also mentioned a
second piece of property “closer to the center of the University which would
be available legally only if the new college surrendered autonomy.” Such a
solution was probably unpalatable to Barr, but the first property sounded like
a compromise with which all interested parties might be able to live.
Barr’s Visit to Charlottesville
Although the prospects for Charlottesville appeared promising, Barr was most
disappointed with his visit on August 3, 1947. According to Barr, the University’s
position had changed enough to make the prospect of a new college in
Charlottesville impossible for all practical purposes. He wrote:
I have inspected the property contiguous to the University of Virginia.
…Unhappily Mr. Darden revised his position on very important points
and the property we inspected is wholly inadequate to our purpose. Mr.
Darden is no longer able to purchase the 175 acre tract and lease it to a
new college, nor would it house the 60 students he thought it would house,
nor is it within a mile of the university library; it is almost three miles
from the library; nor is he sticking by his offer of University facilities
with the sole exception of the library.75
Why Darden changed his positions regarding the proposals is a matter of speculation.
It is possible that he or others at the University decided that an autonomous yet
“contiguous” college at Virginia was an idea potentially fraught with problems.
Upon further reflection and perhaps conversations with other University officials
who may have been more familiar with the likely reaction of the faculty or the
Board of Visitors to the idea of a contiguous college at the University of Virginia,
Darden probably determined that the proposals were untenable. Also, in spite of
the Mellon endowment, the funding for the project may well have been considered
a possible problem. The funds available had not been considered adequate for the
Stockbridge venture. Some of the parties involved may have felt likewise about the
new Charlottesville college, in spite of the proposed relationship with the University.
The questions regarding the nature of the University’s legal relationship with the
new college could well have been an additional issue that defied easy agreement.
Whatever the ultimate reason or reasons, it is clear that Darden decided to pull back
from his earlier offers toward the proposed college.
Darden’s reversal probably did not make a difference since, regardless of
reciprocal arrangements, Barr believed that both pieces of property were
completely inadequate.76 Even if Darden had preserved the earlier proposed
reciprocal benefits for the new college, it was clear that the Charlottesville
properties did not do away with Liberal Arts’ “building problem.” Indeed, the
second smaller piece of property did not have any buildings on it at all when
Barr visited.77
It is also possible, the building problem notwithstanding, that Barr
determined that the proposals would not work. Barr wrote:
My net impression of the trip is that, although Mr. Darden would like to
see something like the St. John’s Program taught at Charlottesville, he
does not know enough about the Program or even about the University
(he has just switched from a political career to academic life) to make
any solution immediately possible.78
Barr’s concerns about Darden’s appreciation of their liberal arts program and his
willingness to fight for it, first expressed in May to Mellon, had not been assuaged.
Barr Ends the Liberal Arts’ Virginia Initiatives

Because of his continuing concerns and what he felt was backpedaling by the
University on issues that resulted in insurmountable obstacles, Barr ultimately
determined that the multi-million dollar proposal for a new liberal arts college
in Charlottesville should be abandoned. He and Darden apparently had
subsequent discussions about the project before Barr finalized his decision,
and it seems that Darden believed that something could be worked out. But in
the end Barr could not support the venture, and, as Mellon’s official advisor to
the Old Dominion Foundation, it was ultimately Barr’s decision to make. To
Darden he wrote, “After the careful consideration you advised, I sent the
letter”—referring presumably to a letter to Old Dominion which relayed his
decision not to designate the University of Virginia as the institution to receive
the Mellon endowment. Barr added, “I am as certain as one can be in such
matters that I acted wisely. I am advised that, as a result, the gift reverts to the
general funds of the Foundation.”79
Concurrent with his decision to not designate the University of Virginia as
the institution for the Mellon endowment, Barr decided that “I do not think
that I as advisor to the Old Dominion Foundation am in any position to secure
stable support from Old Dominion to Liberal Arts, Incorporated, or to any
other body” because of “the fact that the Trustees of Old Dominion disagree
with my judgment.” In order to meet “our moral obligation to St. John’s ,”
Barr made a final recommendation that the Old Dominion Foundation make
the promised gift of $150,000 to St. John’s by July 1, 1948. Barr then resigned
as advisor to the Old Dominion Foundation, “thereby terminating the whole
four million dollars episode.”80
With the advantage of hindsight it is quite incredible that all involved parties
were so intransigent that no use was found for Mellon’s munificent gift. While
starting a new college was probably overly ambitious, there is no doubt that St.
John’s needed the endowment. Also, with World War II over, and with the
assurances from Secretary Forrestal, it seems St. John’s was relatively safe in
its native location. The University of Virginia, too, was a reputable institution
with demonstrated interest in the type of education Mellon was interested in
supporting. To the extent that money was the impediment to implementing
Buchanan’s great books scheme in the Virginia Plan at Virginia in 1936,
Mellon’s gift would have been tremendously useful in Charlottesville.
In the end, rightly or wrongly, none of the actors in this debacle were willing
to risk a compromise. Perhaps because of the large amount of money involved
none of the relevant individuals were truly willing to surrender control over
that money. The Old Dominion Foundation, which held the Mellon endowment,
was ultimately unwilling to act upon Barr’s recommendations to support a
new college in Massachusetts, even though Mellon had appointed Barr as the
official advisor to the Old Dominion Foundation in the spring of 1946. The
cause of Liberal Arts Incorporated was severely hurt when none of the non-
resident board members (Adler, Hutchins, Meiklejohn, and Van Doren) were
willing to join the effort on a full-time basis. At Virginia Darden could not find
a way to bring the program and the millions to Charlottesville, in spite of
Mellon’s expressed desire that he do so. Lastly, Barr and Buchanan had
effectively taken an all or nothing stand—and they wound up with nothing. In
the process they deprived both St. John’s and Virginia of the possibility of
much needed support, and they deprived themselves of having an opportunity
to strengthen their version of liberal education. Although such an opportunity
at St. John’s or Virginia would perhaps not have been of the magnitude they
hoped, for neither institution ever countenanced the expansive liberal arts
undergraduate, graduate, and adult education programs envisioned for
Stockbridge, it arguably would have been better for their philosophy of
education than not to have had at least some implementation with Mellon’s
millions. In what became a high stakes game of control, all the players discussed
compromise, but were ultimately unwilling to accommodate each other. As a
result, everyone lost.
This is not to suggest that nothing was achieved but rather that not as much
was achieved as might have been had the individuals involved been able to
work out their differences. The outcome of the Mellon episode is similar to
that of the Committee on the Liberal Arts at Chicago in the sense that all the
actors were intransigent enough that, in spite of an apparently shared goal,
they were unwilling or unable to effect a solution. Principles and pride may
have been saved in these similar outcomes, but the overall cause of the liberal
arts movement undoubtedly suffered from the inability of the participants to
make these endeavors succeed. As will be seen, further developments in the
liberal arts movement did evolve at Virginia in the 1950s. Also, much came out
of the 1936 Chicago debacle. Indeed, the related establishment of the New
Program at St. John’s in 1937 would, in hindsight, become Barr and Buchanan’s
greatest institutional achievement. Nevertheless, years later, in reflecting on
the decision to leave St. John’s and the aborted attempt to establish a new
liberal arts college (and reversing what he said in his 1947 letter to Darden),
Barr stated, “I don’t claim for a second I made a wise choice.”81
Once the Old Dominion episode was over, one-year-old Liberal Arts,
Incorporated was left in the lurch since all funds reverted to the Old Dominion
Foundation. Without the Mellon endowment the self-described “educational
and charitable corporation” was destitute. In August 1947 Barr issued a
statement on behalf of Liberal Arts, Incorporated which stated, in part, that:
The trustees of the Old Dominion Foundation have felt it was unwise to
authorize invasion of principal, for fear that the remaining endowment
would be insufficient to accomplish the purpose of the gift. They also felt
that in the circumstances it would be wiser to place endowment with an
existing institution capable of housing the educational project which Old
Dominion was prepared to endow.
On their side, the Directors of Liberal Arts, Incorporated, have encountered
serious and time-consuming difficulties in assembling promptly a staff
competent to handle the curriculum envisaged, because of numerous personal
commitments springing from war and post-war conditions.82
Accordingly, and “after carefully weighing these obstacles,” the Directors of
Liberal Arts, Incorporated—Adler, Barr, Buchanan, Hutchins, Meiklejohn, and
Van Doren—decided to liquidate their corporation.83

“If Satisfactory Arrangements Can Be Made”
In the same letter to Darden in which he stated that he would not designate the
University of Virginia as the institution to receive the Mellon endowment, Barr
acknowledged that in doing so, he was consequently putting an end to Liberal

Arts, Incorporated, and thus to his employment as well. Surprisingly, Barr then
noted that “of the things I might do, your suggestion that I return to the University
interests me the most.” Apparently, Barr and Darden, who were friends and
had been classmates at Virginia before World War I, had discussed the possibility
of Barr returning to the University, even if the Mellon money did not come
with him.
It was clear to Barr that the University of Virginia was now his best option.
Of course, Barr did not say this. Instead he wrote to Darden, not insincerely,
that the principal reason he wanted to return to Charlottesville was Darden’s
desire “to do something about undergraduate education and the chance that
I might be useful to such an effort.” Barr stated further, and somewhat
incredibly considering what had just transpired between him and the
University, that, “I would have no fear that we would fail to find sufficient
funds as plans developed. In my experience, though lumps of money cannot
be counted on to cause good planning, good educational planning does draw
the necessary money.”84
That Darden in particular was still interested in having Barr in Charlottesville
after the Mellon debacle seems somewhat amazing; why is a matter of
speculation. Darden was a gentleman and he may have felt some obligation to
help Barr who, by his own decision, was now unemployed. Barr was also a
respected, albeit controversial, nationally known educator who represented a
cutting edge philosophy of liberal arts education. This philosophy was one
with which Darden had some sympathy, especially to the degree that it might
help him achieve his goal of improving the academic quality and standing of
the University of Virginia. A more pragmatic possibility, alluded to in Barr’s
letter, is that Darden hoped Barr’s presence at the University might mean Mellon
money for Virginia in the future. After all, Darden knew that Barr and Mellon
were friends and that Barr, as the president of Liberal Arts, Incorporated, had
been charged by Mellon with the responsibility to determine where Mellon’s
money should go. Such potential might reappear in the future. In short, to
Darden, Barr probably represented potential which would be maximized by
his presence at the University.
Darden graciously replied to Barr that he “should like very much to see you
return to the University if satisfactory arrangements can be made.” Satisfactory
arrangements would, it turned out, be difficult to achieve over the next three
years. Initially Darden suggested that Barr return to the School of History,
where he used to teach. Barr replied that History would be a good place for
him, but that “if it were a few months earlier, I should urge the creation of a
School in the College” since this would be the best way “to adapt to the needs
of the University whatever of my experience at Annapolis may prove
assimilable….” What Barr was suggesting was essentially Buchanan’s great
books scheme in the Virginia Plan—a college in the college. However, Barr
acknowledged that “it is presumably too late to do that before the session opens.
The next best would be to make sure my teaching is the running of a seminar
or seminars on the Great Books, not lecturing in a specialized subject matter.”85
Barr did not want to lecture on “history” rather, he wanted to conduct the sort
of great books seminars first outlined in the Virginia Plan.
At the same time that he was discussing his possible return to Charlottesville
with Darden, Barr was also trying to secure a grant to take a year off to write
the second half of a history of modern Europe.86 Barr enlisted help from
Hutchins to whom he wrote:
I like the looks of things at Virginia, not for a four-million-dollar splurge
but for some quiet and possibly fruitful work. I am pretty confident
something will come of it. Darden is heading in the right direction but
badly needs guidance…. Please note that I am not depressed by the
outcome of Stockbridge, that I am deeply interested by Charlottesville,
but that I think I ought to have a year’s writing first if it can be achieved.87
In a separate letter to Chicago magnate Marshall Field, Barr indicated his belief
that the proposed work at Virginia would be valuable, and he was hopeful that
the great books scheme in the Virginia Plan was a possibility: “If I go
Charlottesville this fall, it will be only for the purpose of teaching—although I
have some hope that in two or three years Colgate Darden and I can get a ‘School’
or even a ‘College within the College’ going.”88
Ultimately Barr did get a grant to take the year off. Darden wished him
well, probably aware that with a twelve-month grant, Barr would again be
looking for employment in the not distant future. He would soon have another
chance to get Barr to the University. Six months later, in January 1948, a round
of discussions between Barr and Darden recommenced. Barr stated he still
wished to return to the University: “In terms of personal, selfish desire, I would
rather be teaching some seminars on the great books, at the university, than
doing anything else I can think of, or being anywhere else I can think of. But
personal desires are tricky foundations for mature men to build good plans on.
I want above all to be useful, preferably to the cause of liberal education.”89
Because he did not, and would not, want any administrative duties, Barr
related to Darden that he was “therefore selfishly without regret that ‘the new
college’ blew up—although I tried to bring it off.” This was a problematic
assertion considering that, in the end, Barr was ultimately the one who had
ended the new college project at Virginia. Nevertheless, Barr stated that he still
wanted to return to the university and eventually submit some educational
plans for Darden’s consideration. These plans, said Barr, would be “worth a
‘fight’—if by then you haven’t had all the academic fights you want!”90 Darden
replied that he wanted Barr to “return to your ancient anchorage” and that he
fell in “wholeheartedly with [Barr’s] thought of coming up in a year or two
with some good plans….”91
Barr’s Globalist Interests Further Delay His Return

It appeared that Barr would finally return to the University of Virginia for the
1948–1949 session. At the end of June 1948 Darden offered Barr a two year
visiting professorship in the Schools of History, Economics, and Political
Science.92 Specifically Darden proposed that Barr teach a new course approved
by the faculty senate but which lacked an instructor. Entitled “The Development
of American Political Thought and Institutions “the course was designed to
stress “the great ideas which have influenced American development.” As
Darden saw it, one of the university’s needs would be met, and Barr would be
able to inaugurate a course with a heavy emphasis on the great books.
Darden’s proposal, however, was not appealing to Barr who wrote to Darden
that the proposal seemed “a less good beginning than the beginning you and I
planned here [in New York this spring].”93 Moreover, not only was Barr not
interested in teaching the course, he would not be coming to the University at
all that fall. Instead he had signed on as the president of the Foundation for
World Government in New York. Darden was naturally surprised by Barr’s
response. Darden wrote, “I felt that only the courses were to be determined by
subsequent conferences and that you were all set to come to the University in
September” but, concluded Darden, “no damage has been done.”94
To understand Barr’s decision and the later political reactions of others to
him in the 1950s it is necessary to briefly explore his involvement with some
of the “globalist” movements that appeared in the wake of World War II. At
the same time he was writing to Darden about returning to Charlottesville he
was also writing about the rise of the Cold War. To Darden he wrote, “I think
much is at stake: the insiders I most respect are unanimous in their diagnosis
that we are heading straight for World War Three and that what will be left,
even of the victor, will be a chemical mixture of anarchy and communism.”95
But Barr’s concerns had led him to do more than write; indeed, Barr had
become increasingly involved with the World Government movement. After
the war, Barr and his colleagues engaged in several world government
endeavors. In a sense, these undertakings were a high watermark for the “liberal
artists” in terms of their aspirations and their presumptions. They had moved
from trying to reform American colleges and universities to trying to establish
new governance frameworks for the world. Although their motivations were
varied and multiple, Barr’s involvement stemmed both from his close
association with the liberal artists assembled at Chicago in 1936 and from his
belief that the United Nations was in danger of suffering the same fate as the
League of Nations.
In 1946, as he was preparing to leave Annapolis, Barr, along with Adler,
Buchanan, Hutchins, and others became members of the Committee to
Frame a World Constitution. Shuttling between Chicago and New York, this
group fancied itself similar to America’s Founding Fathers as it crafted a
new document for governing the affairs of humanity in the second half of the
twentieth century. Careful minutes of the proceedings were kept out of a
sense of being involved in an endeavor of historical proportions. When the
first copy of the constitution came out, however, it was generally greeted
with dismissal, and in some cases, hostility. The Chicago Tribune referred to
the committee as “one of a rash of militant globalist organizations” which
“would supplant the United Nations, abolish the United States and all other
countries as nations, and govern, tax and regulate the world’s people, with
power to seize and manage private property….” 96 Given the growing
conservatism in America after the war, it is not surprising that the document
and its committee were not wellreceived by the general public. The
constitution, and the committee, quickly became an historical footnote.
Nevertheless, by 1948 Barr had become involved with the world federalist
movement and within several months he had been “sucked in” to the degree
that Barr related to Darden that he could not accept a position at the University
of Virginia.97 Having been “persuaded to drop U.Va.” by other world federalists
to work full time on the cause, Barr wrote that, “In 1948 I postponed returning
to college teaching and started the Foundation for World Government, whose
major concern became the economic development of the unindustrialized
countries.”98 He remained president of the foundation, primarily a grant-making
organization, until it was dissolved in the mid-1950s due to lack of funds, and
presumably a lack of interest.99 In spite of promising beginnings Barr’s project
failed to capture significant interest, drew hostility, and ultimately became
marginal.
Virginia Makes Changes that Echo the Virginia Plan

During Barr’s continuing absence, the University of Virginia moved ahead with
plans to reform undergraduate education on Grounds. In his 1949 annual report
President Darden wrote that a core curriculum at Virginia needed “serious
consideration in the near future.”100 Then in 1950 Darden announced that, with
the assistance of the Committee on College Policy (the successor to the Post-
War College Committee), the College of Arts and Sciences would be divided
into Lower and Upper Divisions, “corresponding roughly to the twoyear periods
of required courses and free electives.”101
The Lower Division encompassed the underclass years while the Upper
Division consisted of the upperclass years. While relatively little was changed
for upperclassmen, significant changes were instituted for the underclassmen.
Darden wrote that “the Lower Division has been founded on the principle that
a student’s academic work is his primary reason for being in a University, and
that therefore his studies are the central factor of his life here.”102 Accordingly,
new living and social arrangements were established in the form of a house
system and a new student center, Newcomb Hall, was to be constructed. The
new living arrangements were regarded as particularly important. Of the

underclassman, Darden wrote that “his House will accommodate a group of
140 students; these are less his playmates than his fellows in a real academic
sense. Lounges and playing fields are there, but so are House libraries and
reading rooms, and so are House counselors.”103 These changes represented
the collective consensus of the committees that studied undergraduate education
at Virginia throughout the 1940s, yet at their core they reflected much of the
1935 Virginia Plan. The decision to split the academic work of the college into
underclass and upperclass years, with special housing for underclassmen, even
the special libraries, was largely the same pattern proposed for underclassmen
in the Virginia Plan, except that, in its 1950 incarnation, all students, not just
honors students, would participate.
The parallels with the Virginia Plan were not a coincidence. Throughout
the later 1940s Darden, Barr, and Gooch had been in close contact concerning
educational reforms at Virginia. It is inconceivable that the Virginia Plan
proposals did not enter their discussions, particularly since the upperclassman
honors program in the Virginia Plan, championed by Gooch, had been in place
since 1937. Also, by 1950 Darden and other top administrators were well
informed of the Virginia Plan and its educational prescriptions, if they had not
been previously aware of them, because of a memorandum from Ivey F. Lewis,
Dean of the College and Chairman of the Committee on College Policy.
In this memorandum Lewis, in words remarkably similar to those written
by Barr, Buchanan, and Gooch in 1935, stated that “the type of elective system
introduced by President Eliot of Harvard University”—as distinct apparently
from the type introduced by Thomas Jefferson at the University of Virginia
fifty years before Eliot—had created “profound dissatisfaction in this country
with some features of the liberal arts college program.” Lewis continued:
Now, in my opinion, and in the opinion of many, but not all, of my
colleagues, it is impossible, except by the grace of God and the resiliency
of young American manhood, to give a young man the sort of education
he needs to face life with the terrific urgencies that the present generation
will have to meet, if we fail to give him the anchor of his tradition.104
That anchor could be provided, but it would mean implementing the full
philosophy enunciated in the Virginia Plan. There was, argued Lewis, “hope of
fundamental improvement along two lines, both of which use the same technique
of acquainting the students in small tutorial classes with the great classics of
our western civilization from the Greeks to the present time.” Lewis suggested
that the work of Aydelotte and Barr represented the most promising paths for
education at Virginia:
The first of these promising avenues of approach really stemmed out of

Oxford University and has as its major spokesman Frank Aydelotte,
formerly President of Swarthmore College, now Director of the Institute

of Higher Studies located in Princeton, New Jersey. The second is the
experiment, so interesting and so promising, worked out and tried by one
of our own alumni, Stringfellow Barr, at St. John’s College. The Honors
Work of Aydelotte and the Great Books Program of St. John’s are so
much alike in their basic philosophy and aims that either could be adapted
to our situation at Virginia.
Lewis then summarized the history of the Virginia Plan at Virginia from 1934
to 1950:
The actual approach here has been toward the Honors program. In 1934
Mr. Newcomb appointed a committee of Stringfellow Barr, Arthur
F.Benton, Scott Buchanan, Robert K.Gooch and John J.Luck to study
the situation at the University of Virginia and propose some plan by
which at least some of the better students could be more truly educated
for citizenship than by the prevailing methods. This committee offered
two programs, one, (Plan A), to cover all four years105 and the other,
(Plan B), to institute Honors work as a substitute for the Major Subject
in the last two years of a student’s residence. Plan A appealed to Mr.
Newcomb, but for lack of money was not pushed. To be successful,
such a plan requires top flight teachers and a stern limitation of
enrollment to a maximum of 20 students per section. Failure to reach
this objective was followed by Messrs. Barr and Buchanan setting up
the St. John’s program in 1937.
Plan B had better success. It was duly inaugurated in 1937 by voluntary
efforts of some professors beyond the line of normal duty. I have talked
with students who elected Honors work, and am convinced from their
experience that such work, of tutorial and seminar character, has values
lacking in the usual course work.
The faculty, always a conservative body, agreed readily to delegate
to the Honors Committee, (Mr. Gooch, Chairman), the authority
necessary for the administration of Honors courses. I have heard no
expression of criticism from professors, and believe the faculty would
desire to develop further the type of instruction given in “Honors” or
“Great Books” courses.
…The subject of this memorandum has received long and careful
consideration at the University of Virginia since 1934. A plan worked out
by a special committee was approved by the faculty and has been in
successful operation since 1937. The University of Virginia is in my
judgment fully prepared to make a great contribution to American college
education in general, as well as to is own students, by showing that in a
State University, with all its pressures of numbers, a genuine and practical
training in the liberal arts can be provided and successfully administered,

and a type of training offered that will better fit our graduates for the
stern test of life in their generation.106
This memorandum is most important for it demonstrates that in 1950 the

administration was well aware of the Virginia Plan and still quite interested in
seeing its overall philosophy, if not all of its particulars, enacted. It also gives a
sense of how Darden’s administration conceived of the history of the Virginia
Plan at Virginia. The failure to enact Plan A—Buchanan’s great books
underclassman scheme which proposed an honors college within the regular
College of Arts and Sciences—was attributed entirely to a lack of funds. No
mention was made, for example, of the objection voiced in 1936 that such a
plan might relegate the regular students and their faculty to second-class status.
It could be that Lewis thought this unimportant, particularly since the Lower
Division was for all students, and not divided into regular and elite sections. It
is also possible that the memorandum gave Darden reason to try once again to
bring Stringfellow Barr back to the University of Virginia.
Barr’s Proposal to Return to Charlottesville

Although still working full-time as the president of the Foundation for World
Government, Barr renewed his official correspondence with Gooch and Darden
early in 1950. Darden replied that “I want to talk to you about our common
project here” and that “I am anxious to see you return to the University.” At the
same time, Darden noted that to do so he, Darden, would “have to raise funds
privately since the General Assembly cut substantially our requests for the
coming biennium.”107 Although they met at the University Club in New York to
discuss their plans, Barr soon wrote,“…now it is nearly May. Meanwhile, I
gather an appointment might be fiscally awkward for you anyhow. Why not
postpone for a year?”108 Once again, Barr’s return to Charlottesville was put off
for another academic year.
Finally, in the autumn of 1950, Darden, perhaps having learned from the
previous years that it would be best to start planning early, asked Barr once
more to come to Charlottesville “to discuss our plans for next year.”109 Having
taken the Southerner down from New York, Barr stayed at the Colonnade Club
for two nights before Thanksgiving and met with President Darden and Dean
Lewis.110 Darden and Barr agreed that Barr would submit a memorandum to
Darden outlining his proposal for the coming year.
What Barr submitted was essentially Appendix A—the underclassman great
books scheme—of the 1935 Virginia Plan. In his memorandum to Darden,
Barr stated that “undergraduate education is the weak spot in the University of
Virginia.” He maintained that the University had two moral responsibilities:
“It not only owes its undergraduates more than it is giving them; it also owes
its sister universities whatever guidance and leadership it has the courage and
wisdom to supply.” After discussing how leadership had to come from the
administration—Barr’s perennial concern about Darden—since most faculty
members were the product of the very educational system which needed
correction, Barr stated that enlightened faculty members would rally to reform,
but “any sweeping reform is out of the question.” He cautioned that gradual
steps should be pursued. But he also hinted at his ultimate hope. “Instead of
trying to catch up with Harvard,” Barr wanted the University of Virginia to
“seize the leadership of college education in America.”111
Barr proposed three main steps which apparently he believed were not
“sweeping.” First, Darden should establish a committee of faculty members
committed to reform. Second, the Board of Visitors should establish a School
of General Studies within the Academic Department. This new School of
General Studies would design courses, and not survey courses, that would
ground a student in “the Western tradition, which created America and the
modern world.” Also, initially the School might “have to confine its instruction
to only a small portion of the undergraduate student body.” Also, in establishing
this School of General Studies, Barr advised that the Board of Visitors should
declare that “confronted with the same problem that elicited the Harvard Report
on General Education in 1945, it was determined to create conditions under
which the faculty might reasonably hope to solve that problem.” Such a
statement, argued Barr, “would provide a useful and needed warning to
academic saboteurs.”112
Third, once the School of General Studies was established, a Professor of
General Studies (obviously Barr himself), should be appointed and should present
courses for the School. Aware of the difficulties the person in this position might
encounter, Barr requested that if selected for the position he wanted the title of
Visiting Professor so that he “could resign in two years without embarrassment”
In this position Barr would suggest starting with two reading courses, “on an
elective basis, meeting once a week in the evening for two and a half hours of
round-table discussion.” The first course would be “The Western Tradition I.”
Readings would come from Greek, Roman, and Medieval works, “representing
many ‘fields’ of human thought.” The second course, “The Western Tradition
II,” would utilize readings from the Renaissance to the present.113
Looking forward, Barr suggested that Western Tradition I be a prerequisite
for Western Tradition II, and that the first course be restricted to students in the
Lower Division; that certain courses be required concurrently or as prerequisites;
that students in the courses have common residence facilities; and that special
lectures, open to the public, be arranged for the enrolled students.
The greatest obstacle to his proposals, as Barr saw it, would be the lack of
qualified faculty to teach in courses such as these. Material means were a lesser
concern: “Money can be found if something genuine happens.” Finally, Barr
concluded that the memorandum should remain confidential—“in enterprises
like this one, tact would appear to be the oil without which all machines grow
hot and jam—even faculties.” In closing, Barr offered Darden “one last word,
based on hard-won experience. If the undergraduate college is indeed the weak
spot in the University’s instruction, then the program outlined here deserves
first priority on your own thought and attention. If it receives less than that, I
predict failure.”114
The similarities of Barr’s 1950 proposal to those of the 1935 Virginia Plan
are striking; indeed, it is obvious that Barr’s memorandum to Darden is of a
piece with Plan A of the Virginia Plan. Barr’s contention that the mess in which
higher education found itself would best be remedied with seminars on the
great books of the Western tradition, a limited enrollment of underclassmen,
prerequisite or concurrent courses, special lectures, and common facilities could
all be found in Buchanan’s underclassman scheme in the Virginia Plan.
Darden’s Reaction and Decision

Much like Newcomb had reacted to the original Virginia Plan when it was
presented in 1935, Darden likewise stated to Dean Lewis of Barr’s memorandum
that “I do not find myself in accord with his sweeping condemnation of college
work, but I have no doubt of the value of the courses which he suggests, and I
should like so much to have him give them.”115 Lewis replied:
Yes, the condemnation is too sweeping, but that is the way of God’s Angry
Men…. However, there is much in what Winkie says. The increasing
compartmentalization of knowledge, so essential for the training of
specialists at the research and graduate level, has sifted down into the
colleges and…has broken up the field into unrelated special disciplines.
In this process any sort of unifying and guiding aim has been lost. In my
opinion the only broad field in which unity can be found lies in what
Winkie calls the Western Tradition…. A School of General Studies would
be the obvious first step in what would probably develop into a bitter
controversy in the faculty. The insecure, the timid, the lazy, the narrow,
the small minded would line up with the men who glorify research and
honestly believe the extension of knowledge to be the primary duty of a
university….
Lewis proffered that, regardless of the duties of a university, the proper function
of a college was to teach young people to think and that Barr’s proposal was a
step in the right direction.
In short I think Winkie is fundamentally right, but so free from the current
climate of educational opinion that the installation of courses in the
Western Tradition must be regarded as the opening skirmish in a long
and hard campaign. I would like to be in the thick of this fight because of
my conviction that the proposal charts the direction in which we must
ultimately move.116
Darden decided to move forward, and consequently Barr decided to move back
to Charlottesville. What followed is the final chapter of the Virginia Plan at the
University of Virginia.
CHAPTER 6
The Virginia Plan at Virginia
“The University probably needs transfiguration”
—Scott Buchanan

Barr Returns to Charlottesville
Stringfellow Barr returned to the University of Virginia in 1951. His old friend
Scott Buchanan wrote, “I am glad you are back in Charlottesville since…the
University probably needs transfiguration….”1 Barr had a two-year appointment
as a Visiting Professor in the Political Science Department, of which Barr’s
other old friend, Robert Gooch, was the chairman. Barr’s primary responsibility
at the University was to teach a two-year course crafted out of a mix of Darden’s
1948 and Barr’s 1950 proposals. Titled Political Science 73–74, “Origin and
Development of American Political Thought and Institutions,” the course
description was as follows: “Reading and seminar discussion of the great
political classics of the Western tradition including The United States
Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and selected works of Plato, Aristotle,
Locke, Calhoun, de Tocqueville, and Bryce.” 2 The course, in spite of its
departmental mooring, was concerned with more than political science, indeed,
it was largely an introductory great books seminar. As at St. John’s, the first
book read was Euclid’s Elements.3 The second year of the course, titled Political
Science 75–76, The Western Political Tradition, offered “Reading and Seminar
discussion of great political classics, including selected works of Plato, Plutarch,
Cicero, Dante, and Montesquieu.”4
Barr quickly regained the immense popularity he had enjoyed as a professor
in the history department in the 1920s and 1930s. Barr was interesting and
prominent, both academically and sartorially. In a community awash in sport
coats from Brooks Brothers and J.Press, Barr liked to wear flamboyant suits in
green or white.5 He gave lectures on liberal education and made presentations
to the larger university community, including the 1952 address to entering
students on “The University and the Honor System.”6 Barr’s great books
seminars were so popular among the students that they were soon
oversubscribed. The first class in 1951 consisted of fifteen to twenty students
and met in a conference room on the top floor of Alderman Library from 7:30
until 9:30 in the evening. Staige Blackford, a student in the class, recalled that
“he had never taken anything like it.” The class was conducted seminar style,
just like at St. John’s. As a teacher Barr was “ebullient.” He would throw out
questions to provoke a response. Barr even brought in Buchanan to teach Plato.
171
At the end of the year, the final exam was conducted Oxford style: there was
no written test, only an oral exam with Barr. After the final, Barr held a cocktail
party for the students.7
In 1952 Barr’s class was held in New Cabell Hall. The fifteen or so students
and Barr sat around a rectangular table with additional chairs around the walls.
Again the final was a one-on-one oral examination. Referring to him as
“rumpled, tweedy, and academic,” one student in the class, Pete Anderson,
noted that Barr was very engaging, that he “teased conversation out of people,
thereby provoking discussion.”8 Another student in the class, Chauncey Olinger,
noted that “we learned for the first time that with great or even very good
books there were not so much ‘right answers’ to the questions raised but various
interpretations of what the author meant. Suddenly, in that seminar, we had
become adults intellectually.”9 Olinger suggests that Barr was “perhaps the
most interesting character to bestride the University of Virginia in the twentieth
century.”10
The student reaction to Barr, however, was not universally positive. One
student, John Marshall, thought Barr was a “pompous ass” who could be very
condescending and did not treat everyone in his seminar equally, but instead
had his favorites.11 Certainly Barr was no shrinking violet. Olinger recorded
that, “When a student made a response that strongly suggested that he had not
read the assigned book, Barr courteously invited him to cite the page in the
text to which he had reference.”12
Barr was also “a controversial figure” outside of the classroom. Although
his great books course “was highly esteemed,” he “aroused passions” because
of his liberal politics.13 Barr feared that he would suffer political criticism from
other faculty members and claimed that “there were two or three people who
were sort of faithfully McCarthyite hounds.” Particularly upsetting to Barr
was that “others didn’t tell them to sit down.” People would say “they would
rather not get mixed up in that, you know…this so disgusted me.”14 “I was
having a good time teaching but I was horrified beyond belief that anybody
that dared talk about me and Jefferson would think that they weren’t
McCarthyites.”15 As a result, Barr later recalled, “by the end of the first year I
knew I didn’t want to be there permanently because, as I put it to one of my
oldest friends there, unfortunately, when I go to my seminar… I have to pass
under…a marble slab and on it was a quotation from Thomas Jefferson, well,
the gist of it was, it may cost you something to tell the truth but tell it anyway,
but I can’t remember the exact quotation. It’s a swell remark.”16
In addition to teaching great books seminars, the other understanding related
to Barr’s return to Charlottesville was that the University would consider
implementing a great books curriculum for all underclassmen modeled on the
St. John’s program. Barr had understood that President Darden would appoint
him chairman of a curriculum review committee charged with revising the
undergraduate curriculum at Virginia.17 However, upon arrival in Charlottesville,
The Virginia Plan at Virginia • 173
Barr discovered that he was not on a committee at all. Why is unclear. Perhaps,
as had been the case with the aborted Mellon initiative, Darden had promised
Barr more than he could deliver. Or perhaps Darden believed that Barr would
have been a liability to any proposal associated with him. Whatever the reason,
Barr’s public role in reform at Virginia was limited.
In spite of the Liberal Arts, Incorporated debacle, Paul Mellon remained
interested in Barr and the University of Virginia. In the Spring of 1952, Mellon
gave the University of Virginia one of the first edition sets of the fifty-four
volume Great Books of the Western World, which was edited by Robert Hutchins
and Mortimer Adler and published by Encyclopedia Britannica.18 Mellon
probably also paid Barr’s salary during the two years that he was teaching at
Virginia.19 Mellon’s continuing support of the great books seminars at Virginia
was certainly in keeping with his educational and philanthropic philosophies.
This is demonstrated by the explanatory notes for a philanthropic organizational
chart drawn up in 1957 and signed by Paul Mellon which indicated that the
Old Dominion Foundation was interested in pursuing “grants in Virginia.” The
chart also listed “strengthen University of Virginia” as one of the Virginia
projects and noted that an Advisory Board to the foundation for Virginia projects
should include Colgate Darden.20
Barr’s Departure and its Meaning

As noted above, Barr’s popularity with the students did not always carry over
to other university community members, especially some faculty. Barr was an
acerbic critic. His educational arguments remained remarkably consistent as
he continued to bash away at the lack of liberal education in academia. Following
one lecture he gave several years later in College Park, Maryland, for example,
Barr noted: “Spoke extemporaneously. Somewhat abusively, about
contemporary historiography. Prepared for hisses. Loud applause. Probably
each applaudant applied my remarks to his seating neighbors, not himself.”21
Barr was outspoken about more than higher education, however. Always
cantankerous and politically liberal, Barr made enemies among the conservative
Virginia faculty. Being an outspoken critic of McCarthyism made Barr
anomalous in the early fifties. As a result of his beliefs and past actions, some
faculty on the conservative Grounds of the University of Virginia verbally
attacked him as a dangerous radical. A particularly vitriolic antagonist was
David McCord Wright, a member of the Economics department who attacked
Barr “for his economic and political views.”22 This perception was certainly
abetted by the fact that Barr brought the Foundation for World Government
from New York City to Charlottesville when he accepted his faculty appointment
in 1951 and that he continued to work as the part-time president of the
Foundation during his time at the university. These conditions made for a very
uncomfortable situation for Barr. He recounted that one colleague at Virginia
had “been on the local radio and said practically all the faculty were pro-
Communists or Socialists or something wicked.”23 Barr stated that “when this
McCarthy stuff started I knew I didn’t want to stay.”24 Because of the political
feelings against him his contract was not renewed. In an October 1954 letter to
a colleague at Williams College, Barr wrote:
…my two year appointment as Visiting Professor of Political Science
(actually made so that I could, if possible, inoculate my alma mater with
some Great Books Seminars) expired in June 1953; and, although the
inoculation worked, faculty bickering led the president not to invite me
to rejoin the faculty permanently. On the whole, I think that may have
been just as well, both for the institution and for me.25
It is instructive to consider the reasons for Barr’s departure from the University
of Virginia for it was generally Barr’s politics that were suspect, not his curricular
philosophy. Barr had returned to Virginia as a Visiting Professor, ostensibly for
two years. As those two years were drawing to a close, as Barr stated in a 1975
interview, “There was pressure on the president because I had a coterie of
alumni—I had rather large classes in history—a coterie of alumni who swore
by me and I think President Darden may have asked me to stay in order to
pacify them. I don’t think he wanted me to stay—and I rewarded him: I said I
didn’t want to stay.”26 There was also pressure on Darden from Barr’s detractors.
“The McCarthy stuff was getting rougher and rougher and the president, who
was an ex-congressman, was delighted when I said I thought I’d had all I wanted,
because he was under pressure from the nitwits he had—not numerous but
bothersome—and I was supposed to be highly dangerous.”27
Political discomfort may not have been the sole source of Barr’s unhappiness
in Charlottesville, however. Some of Barr’s acquaintances have suggested that,
in addition to the repressive political atmosphere, Barr was also disenchanted
with the way the University was changing during that time. Years later Barr
stated: “it seemed to me that [the University of Virginia] was taking over all
the worst of American education, and then still giving itself airs, as if they all
agreed with Jefferson.”28 Barr may well have been referring both to the politics
and the administrative direction he found on Grounds. One of Barr’s former
students in the 1930s who became a life-long friend, Charles E. Moran, believed
Barr was frustrated by the University in the 1950s. Barr had vision, but was
also fiery and controversial and this created problems for him. Moran believed
Barr suffered from a “lack of fulfillment” during his return to the University.29
Another acquaintance, Raymond Bice (who became the University Historian
after Moran) claimed that Barr liked to think of the University as an Ivy League
school. In the early 1950s, Virginia was still fairly small with a total enrollment
of about 3000 students. However, like many institutions, the University was
growing rapidly after the war and Barr, suggested Bice, may well have believed
that Virginia was getting too large because large numbers of students were
incompatible with the type of educational program that Barr believed should be
pursued at Virginia.30 A 1950s student in Barr’s seminar, Pete Anderson, likewise
believed that Barr did not find the changes at Virginia in the 1950s to his liking.31
This contention is borne out by Barr’s own comments. Referring to the university
in the early 1970s, Barr remarked: “Now it seems to me, it’s more of the same….
What is it, seven thousand students or some? It’s a hell of a mess. And I don’t see
many ideas…I could name a dozen ‘multiversities,’ that it multi-ish resembles.
No, I’m afraid I’d be very unhappy there now…if I were still teaching.”32
It seems likely that Barr was highly ambivalent about the University of Virginia
by the time he departed in the summer of 1953. The McCarthyite presence at
Virginia was disturbing to him. Of the McCarthyites Barr stated: “the idea of a
community in the university Thomas Jefferson had founded, talking the way
they were talking, just made me ill. I wanted to get out.” Yet Barr loved the
University: “I was devoted to that place. The town is beautiful…and Jefferson
had left his print. It had a quality I haven’t seen on any other campus.”33
This ambivalence is perhaps best reflected in his edited comments in a 1975
interview. Speaking of his departure from Charlottesville in 1953 Barr stated
that “I would have left at the end of two years…unless they’d begged me to stay,
and I wouldn’t have stayed.” However, when Barr edited the interview transcript
he crossed out “and I wouldn’t have stayed.”34 Thus Barr’s final word on the
subject was that he would have left at the end of the two years—perhaps.
Barr was not begged to stay. A 1957 letter to Mrs. Barr from a friend in
Charlottesville reveals the feelings that the Barrs must have felt from this rebuke:
“Another head has fallen into the bucket at the University! This time it was in
the English Dept. MacAleer has bit the dust and all because MacAleer is one
of the few people connected with this Univ. who can speak the English
language…. Why oh why does this University always cut its own throat?”35
When it became known that Barr would not be staying at the University,
one of the students in his Political Science 73–74 class, Chauncey Olinger,
drafted a letter to be signed by willing students in Barr’s classes. The letter
read as follows:
As you know, the Board of Visitors has not invited Mr. Barr to return next
year to continue with the kind of instruction we have had for the last
semester. Thus, as it now stands, the two courses will not be taught at the
University next year. We believe that this kind of instruction should be
available to the students of the University on both the first and second
year class level, again next year.
We have found in this course a rational and intelligent attempt to
understand the world in which we live, through the dialectical
investigation of government, ethics, mathematics, religion, and other
aspects of human existence. The books we have read have been
important landmarks in human thought, making it possible for the
student to participate in the struggle of ideas, which has so greatly

shaped men’s lives. This dialectical discussion method has not been a
boring and dogmatic recitation of notes, but rather a dynamic give-
and-take, in which each man has been able to develop his rational
faculties, to express his own ideas, and to learn new ideas.
Believing for these reasons, that this kind of course has far more to
offer than the usual courses, it is requested that those students of Mr.
Barr’s classes, who are interested in the continuance of such courses, list
their names, addresses, and phone numbers below. A meeting of those
who sign will be arranged in the near future to determine how effective
group support for the continuance of these courses may be developed.36
After obtaining the support of his fellow students, Olinger submitted a petition
to the Department of Political Science, the Faculty Senate, and the administration
of the University of Virginia. The petition, which was signed by thirty-eight
students in the classes, read:
We request the Department of Political Science, the Faculty Senate, and
the Administration of the University of Virginia to continue Political
Science 73–74 and 75–76.
As students in these seminars we have found both the approach and
content unusually rewarding. Through dialectical investigation we have
attempted to understand the basic principles of government. Fundamental
books on political problems have been analyzed in give-and-take
discussion. We find the expression, criticism, and exchange of ideas an
invaluable method of learning.
For these reasons, we think that it would be profitable to continue these
courses.37
The petition was favorably received by several members of the faculty, including
Robert Gooch, the chairman of the School of Political Science, who asked that
the petition be addressed solely “to him alone to expedite handling and guidance
of the petition in accomplishing its purpose.” In a May 1953 letter to Olinger,
Gooch wrote:
This is just a word to acknowledge the petition which you have handed
me, requesting the continuance, if possible, of the courses Political Science
73–74 and Political Science 75–76.
May I say in my personal capacity that I am greatly heartened by this
action on the part of you and your fellow students? That some of you
should desire to continue an intellectual experience which you have found
exceptionally rewarding is both reasonable and intelligent; that all of you
desire to see this experience available for other students is as inspiring as
it is unusual.
I should like to add that I was much impressed by your suggestion in

conversation concerning my initial comment that compliance with your
petition might involve insuperable budgetary problems. Your belief that
certain members of the College Faculty might voluntarily participate in
continuing the opportunities you recommend struck me as sound and
promising. On the basis of many years of experience with the Degree
with Honors, I am convinced that the most fruitful reward a student
possesses of genuine intellectual curiosity can have here results from the
willingness on the part of certain members of the College Faculty to render
available to such students, time, assistance, and sympathy far beyond the
demands of an already onerous schedule.
I am sure you and your fellow petitioners will be glad to learn that a
committee, of which I am pleased to have been asked to be a member,
has been set up on the invitation of the Lower Division of the College,
with a view to establishing seminars similar to those you have found so
valuable. I am of the opinion that such a scheme promises very real
advantages over continuation of the seminars in the Department of Political
Science. Mr. Jack Dalton is chairman of the committee. I am handing on
to him your petition.38
This petition aided in the establishment of the Lower Division Seminars

which grew out of some of the broader post-war curricular reforms discussed
in the previous chapter. It is to this further development that this study now
turns.
Continuing Curricular Proposals at Virginia

The time of Barr’s tenure as a visiting professor—the autumn of 1951 through
the spring of 1953—was a period of continued curricular proposals at the
University of Virginia. Although reviews had been conducted since the war
years, the nature of the proposals during Barr’s time was much closer to that
found in the 1935 Virginia Plan. While Barr kept a low profile during his return
to Charlottesville, Barr’s friends were deeply involved in curricular reform
efforts during this time, and it seems highly probable that Barr’s views were
represented by Gooch and others. All involved may have decided that Barr
could be more effective behind the scenes. The nature of the reforms proposed
during Barr’s two-year tenure certainly suggests that Barr had a hand in their
conception.
One proposal came from the Committee on Degrees with Honors. From
its creation by President Newcomb in 1934, Robert Gooch had served as the
chairman of the Committee on Honors Courses which had authored the
Virginia Plan. He remained chairman of this committee, which was
reconstituted as the Committee on Degrees with Honors, after Plan B in the
Virginia Plan—the Honors Program for upperclassmen—was implemented

by the faculty in 1937. Gooch remained closely involved with the attempts
to implement the remaining part of the Virginia Plan—the great books
program for underclassmen—during the next two decades. Gooch was
likewise involved in the 1947 negotiations between the University, Paul
Mellon, and Liberal Arts, Incorporated to establish a great books college
affiliated with the University. He was also instrumental in the discussions
between President Darden, Dean Lewis, and Stringfellow Barr that ultimately
resulted in Barr’s return to Charlottesville in 1951.
The great books part of the Virginia Plan for underclassmen had, of course,
not been adopted at Virginia in 1936. Starting in the autumn of 1951 Barr’s
courses—Political Science 73–74 and 75–76—were the first to introduce
general great books courses into the first and second year curriculum. However,
Gooch and his committee decided that the Honors Program would be a good
way to expand the role of the great books in the upperclass years—beyond
what was already done by the existing Honors Program. It will be recalled that
the Honors Program established in 1937 was departmentally based. Although
Gooch’s Committee on Degrees with Honors served an oversight function by
approving departmental honors program proposals, the content of the programs
was ultimately determined by the participating departments. The departmental
programs often relied heavily on great books to comprise their honors readings,
but they also chose those books that were closest to the relevant discipline. In
early 1952, with Gooch still serving as chairman, the Committee on Degrees
with Honors put forward a proposal which stated that, “During the course of
around 20 years, and even after the establishment of the ‘departmental’ Honors
Degree, the Committee have (sic) studied the question of General Honors.”
Now, the Committee was ready to present to the faculty of the College “a
proposal for a program of General Honors work, to be available to qualified
students in their third and fourth sessions [i.e., years].”39
This new program in General Honors was to be offered in addition to the
“departmental” honors program. It was to be overseen by a General Honors
Staff that would be “analogous to…the staff of a School—English, say, or
Chemistry, or Political Science—that may offer an Honors Degree Program.”
The new General Honors Staff would act like a regular department or, adhering
to Jefferson’s terminology, “School.” As had been the case since 1937: “The
staff of the School has the responsibility of organizing and proposing a program
that, if approved by the Honors Degree Committee, is carried out by the School
concerned.” Gooch’s Committee now proposed that: “In a similar manner, it is
assumed, the responsibility for organizing a General Honors program will rest
with a General Honors Staff, and the program it proposes must have the approval
of the Honors Degree Committee as the agent of the Academic Faculty.” In
other words, Gooch’s committee—the Committee on Degrees with Honors—
was proposing that a new school, directed by a General Honors Staff, be
established. This new school would subsequently propose a general honors

program to be approved by Gooch’s Committee on Degrees with Honors.
Additionally, “The Committee will, of course, gladly make available to the
General Honors Staff, if established, its accumulations of materials representing
some 20 years of the Committee’s history.”40
This rather cozy arrangement was furthered by the Committee’s statement
that “an opportunity has arisen for the University to make application for a
substantial grant from a Foundation for such development of our Honors work.
The Committee also have (sic) reason to believe that this application for funds
has a good chance for favorable action by the Directors of the Foundation.”41
The Foundation was never named, but it is likely, given its stated goals and
association with Gooch and others, that it was Paul Mellon’s Old Dominion
Foundation.
The Committee members then presented a specimen plan for the B.A. with
General Honors that they believed would “enable the exceptionally able student
to escape from what President Aydelotte had called ‘the academic lockstep.’”
The plan proposes the reading, analysis, interpretation, and critical
discussion of books universally regarded as of enduring value and of
books, recent and current, regarded as exceptionally representative of
the basic issues of the twentieth century…. Moreover, the plan envisages
the study of the natural and social sciences, with special laboratory
exercises in the natural sciences and experience in what might be called
“laboratory work” in the social sciences.
The plan places emphasis on discussion and the excitation of varying
individual capacities, rather than upon lectures. It proposes small classes,
ranging from ten to twenty students and using all pedagogic devices,
whether those of the scientist or of Socratic discussion. The plan calls for
its own special faculty, composed of scholars who manifest a nice balance
between the arts and the sciences, between the values of living affairs
and the abstract thought of the mathematician.42
More specifically, the program would employ tutorials, seminars, lectures, and
natural science laboratories. Each student would have a language tutorial three
hours a week to help the student understand “the language arts.” Each student
would have a mathematics and logic tutorial for three hours a week that would
emphasize “classical and recent mathematical work.” Additionally, for two hours
a day two days a week, and with two instructors, students would engage in
reading seminars. Similar to the seminar led by Hutchins and Adler at Chicago,
and Barr’s courses at Virginia, this seminar would focus on “the cultural tradition
of Western Europe and its developments beyond the geographical limits that
the expression suggests. Moreover, and in an amelioration of earlier proposals,
because “this tradition cannot be objectively viewed without a basis of
comparison…the General Honors staff would plan to introduce the student to
some other culture outside our own tradition.” For three hours a week each
student would have a natural science and a social science tutorial and laboratory.
Finally, there would be a one-hour required lecture each week “to be given by
visitors and by members of the University faculty with a discussion period
afterwards.”43
Although Gooch’s Committee on Degrees with Honors apparently believed
that their plan provided the best of both of the schemes in the Virginia Plan
since it utilized both seminars and tutorials, great books and honors work,
others did not see it this way. Archibald Shepperson, a professor of English,
replied that he disliked the elevation of logic proposed by the plan. Done for
its own sake, such elevation would, he argued, place logic in “utopian seclusion,
untrammeled by contact with the world of things as they are.” Doing so would
tend “toward the neo-medievalism which has had, in my view, such a deplorable
effect upon the literature and thought of our time.” The bulk of Shepperson’s
objections however, were not based on the course of study.44
Shepperson wrote that “the General Honors Staff would be far too important
and potentially influential a group not to be required to operate under the
Faculty’s direct control.” Also, establishing a General Honors School, “would
foster, however inadvertently, jealousies and antagonisms inherent in the very
nature of the situation.” Both non-honors students and faculty, implicitly
relegated to second-class status, would “chafe” under the proposed arrangement.
Also, Shepperson understandably disliked the anonymity of the foundation
interested in supporting the general honors initiative. Because of this, the
foundation’s “policies and reputation cannot be known.” More important,
Shepperson was concerned about the personnel who might be employed to
support the proposed program:
If, for example, men of the type of President Meiklejohn, formerly of
Amherst, and Chancellor Hutchins, formerly of Chicago, should be
appointed, with or without pressure from the foundation, I should be
opposed to any plan, however good, that might be suggested. My reason
is that such men, as far as I can judge, have succeeded far better in
antagonizing those with whom they attempted to work than in effecting
such educational reforms as they have undertaken, however meritorious
these may or may not have been.45
Another English professor, Fredson Bowers, also argued against the General
Honors plan. He too proposed that the plan was a bad idea on several accounts.
First, the plan was unbalanced “in its emphasis upon Philosophy and its allied
subject of Mathematics, together with Natural Sciences. I do not believe that
the study of the Great Books…substitutes for a student’s electivecourse study
in such cultural subjects as History, Music, Art, and Literature.” Bowers also
suggested that some professors, namely those whose fields were well-
represented in the proposal, would naturally be more partial to the proposal.
Likewise, the converse was also true. “I do think it is worth pointing out that
the General course can naturally be viewed with more professional enthusiasm
by some than by others.” Bowers added that the proposal might well be coming
at undergraduate education backwards:
We are in a period in which standard academic routine is being re-
examined, and the latest panacea is General Education, a concept with
which I have some sympathy…. Nevertheless, I suspect that the soundest
way of improving education is from the bottom up, as Harvard and
Princeton are trying to do. The emphasis there is on giving all students as
early as possible a very broad background and only gradually leading
them in towards a deeper and more specific study of limited areas…. So
far as I can see, the General Honors proposal approaches the problem
from a completely opposite point of view, substituting General Study as
the apex of the pyramid instead of its base.46
Bowers had, however, more than just curricular concerns that were wrapped up
in professional ones. The foundation grant might be a problem for, although it
might get the General Honors program started, he doubted that the foundation
would endow it. As a result the program would eventually become an enormous
financial liability for the University. He also objected to “the idea of a college
within a college” because it would promote discord among the students and
among the faculty. Also, “The General Honors course, with its segregation and
its experimentalism, divorces itself from normal academic processes rather than
builds upon the foundation of what we have.”47 Of course, this “divorce” was a
primary reason why the Committee proposed the plan in the first place. He
concluded by arguing “with all the force of my experience and convictions
against the proposed plan for special classes and supervised work in General
Honors administered to a segregated group of students by a segregated and
autonomous staff, whose educational policies and theories are almost inevitably
going to clash with those of the general faculty.”48
The most significant response came from a group of professors who, like
Gooch, were involved with the existing “departmental” honors program that
had been established in 1937 by the Virginia Plan. In a letter addressed to
Gooch, these seven professors stated the following:
In terms of your committee’s circular to members of the faculty, we would

like to respond with one suggestion in regard to the plan for a General
Honors Degree. It is that a General Honors program be introduced for
suitable students in their first and second year of study, to be followed by
two years of “De*partmental Honors.”
Our grounds for this proposal are: (1) the character of the present
program of required studies in the first two years, being primarily
concerned with the average student, is not such as to produce the maximum
of intellectual development among the best students; (2) the primary aim
of education at universities is to teach students to think and intellectual
discipline and skill cannot be acquired without concentration in one field
for a period of two years or more. Hence we think that whereas a suitable
General Honors Program would be most helpful for able students in their
first two years in the College, no “general” program should be introduced
for the third and fourth years.49
This suggestion was essentially what the Virginia Plan had recommended “as
an integral whole” in 1935: general honors work for the best students in the
first two years followed by departmental honors work in the last two years. As
will be seen, it also set the stage for the next curricular proposal.
Because the General Honors plan included modern works, social science,
and study of non-western culture, in addition to the more traditional liberal
arts material, it avoided many of the criticisms of the St. John’s program. Yet,
because of faculty resistance, the committee’s proposal of General Honors in
the liberal arts for select upperclassmen was not accepted. The Honors Program
established by the Virginia Plan remained exclusively departmentally based as
it had been since 1937.
Toward the Full Virginia Plan

Of those seven professors who, in remarkable agreement with the Virginia Plan,
suggested to Gooch that general honors work ought to be conducted in the first
two years of College, two would become particularly important in the future of
honors work at Virginia in the post-Barr era. One was David YaldenThomson
who became the chairman of the Committee on Degrees with Honors after Gooch
stepped down from the position. The other was Marcus Mallett, a fellow
professor of philosophy with Yalden-Thomson, and also the Associate Dean of
the Lower Division.
It will be recalled from the previous chapter that President Darden split
the College into Lower and Upper Divisions in 1950. This split, which
divided the underclassmen from the upperclassmen, was intended to
promote greater academic excellence among the Virginia undergraduates.
In particular, the Lower Division was designed to do so via common living
quarters (the new McCormick Road dormitories), resident faculty advisors,
structured events and intramurals, and significant course prescriptions
during the first two years.
The Lower Division Committee, appointed by Darden in May 1950,
consisted of five men charged with developing the policies for the Lower
Division.50 As Mallet put it in 1951, “The [Lower Division] Committee interprets
[its] purpose as the creation of a pattern of collegiate life in which intellectual
interest and academic achievement are central, but which will also be conducive
to an early general maturing of the younger student.”51 With these goals in
mind, the Lower Division Committee instituted a series of meetings for first
and second year students “designed to acquaint the student with the various
fields of learning offered by the University” and to “provide an opportunity
for students to hear some of the outstanding professors speak on topics of
general interest to persons seeking an education.” The first meeting, held on
the evening of October 27, 1951, featured Stringfellow Barr, who spoke on
“The Meaning of Liberal Education.”52
Although the creation of the Lower Division represented some movement
toward the goals expressed in Buchanan’s scheme in the Virginia Plan—
including greater faculty-student contact, regular lectures, and common living
arrangements for underclassmen—they were also for all underclassmen. This
aspect was in line with Barr and Buchanan’s later belief that liberal education
was for all students, not just honors students. While Barr and Buchanan may
have always believed that was the case, the Virginia Plan was nevertheless
directed at elite students. The Virginia Plan’s specific call for liberal arts
education for elite first and second year students that was grounded in the
great books was renewed in the spring of 1953. Barr’s friend Marcus Mallett,
acting on the advice he and others had given Robert Gooch in their response
to the General Honors plan, proposed “a special Lower Division program for
well prepared and able students.” It will be recalled that in his 1950
memorandum to Darden, Barr, reiterating Buchanan’s great books scheme
in the Virginia Plan, had proposed the establishment of a School of General
Studies with two great books courses in “The Western Tradition” for select
underclassmen. Barr did teach two great books courses in the Political Science
Department during the 1951–52 and 1952–53 academic years, but his other
proposals got no further. Mallett proposed to build on the foundations laid
by Barr:
The plan would be to request the Academic Faculty, through the
Committee on Academic Legislation, to allow the Lower Division to
experiment next year with a group of from fifteen to twenty carefully
selected students. These students would be assigned to a specific section,
which would not be open to other students, in each of their courses. The
understanding would be that the instructors of these special sections would
be allowed great freedom in the type and amount of material to be covered.
The experimental group would take, in the first year, Mathematics 1–2,
English 1–2, a foreign language, and Chemistry 1–2. In addition, they
would take a new course, tentatively entitled “Lower Division Seminar
I.” The proposed Lower Division Seminar would be a discussion group,
under the “dual leader” plan, and the material would be certain selected
classics of western civilization. It is intended as a continuation of the sort
of thing that professor Stringfellow Barr has been doing in Political
Science 73–74, but more generalized.53
Mallett believed that this program, over time, would allow the University of
Virginia to develop “an integrated Liberal Arts program for the experimental
group.”54
As for administrative structure, the Committee on the Lower Division “felt
strongly that the Lower Division Seminar should not be under the jurisdiction
of any one department in the College.” This position was essentially the same
as the one proposed in Buchanan’s 1935 Virginia Plan underclassmen scheme
which proposed a college within the college for elite students, and in Gooch’s
1952 proposal for General Honors for elite upperclassmen. Because Gooch’s
1952 proposal had foundered in part on the plan to establish a new General
Honors Staff that was to be analogous to that of other existing departments,
Mallett’s proposal, backed by the Lower Division Committee, sought to avoid
similar difficulties by keeping the proposed elite program within the bounds
of the Committee’s purview. Mallett wrote:
Since this would be a radical departure from tradition, the Lower
Division Committee decided to appoint a Committee on Lower Division
Seminars under whose auspices the seminars would be offered. It was
decided to ask Mr. Jack Dalton to be chairman of this committee, and
to ask Mr. Gooch, Mr. Weedon, and Mr. Mallett to serve as the other
members. The Committee’s function would be to prepare a syllabus for
the seminars, and submit it to the faculty via the Committee on Academic
Legislation.55
In addition to avoiding the same administrative pitfall that had contributed to
the rejection of Gooch’s General Honors proposal, the Committee on the Lower
Division had the additional advantage of strong student support for the idea of
the seminars, as manifested by Chauncey Olinger’s petition which was discussed
earlier in this chapter:
In view of the fact that the proposal for this special program was partially
occasioned by a petition from students requesting that the Political Science
Seminars be continued, the Committee would also propose to the
Committee on the Lower Division Seminars that a “Lower Division
Seminar II” be offered next year as a substitute for Political Science 75–
76. Other than this, the Committee did not feel that it should, at this time,
discuss the extension of the special program into a second year. However,
it is definitely envisaged, if the Faculty will allow this experiment, that it
will become a two-year program.56
Whether the Faculty would allow this experiment, and in essence adopt the
underclassmen idea first proposed by Buchanan in the 1935 Virginia Plan, was
determined at a faculty meeting on May 26, 1953. Those opposed to Barr,
Gooch, and their like-minded colleagues had defeated Gooch’s General Honors
proposal a year earlier and now they likewise arrayed to defeat Mallett’s
proposal. It will be recalled that Barr’s most vocal detractor had been David
McCord Wright. It is thus not surprising that Wright made a vigorous attack
on the Lower Division Special Program which proposed to continue Barr’s
courses. Although he could not be at the meeting, Wright submitted a letter to
the faculty to present his views:
On the agenda for this evening I see the announcement of two new courses,
the “Lower Division Seminars” 1–2 & 3–4 entitled the Liberal Arts
Tradition, designed to deal with concepts of history and tragedy,
mathematics and the sciences, politics and society, and poetry and
philosophy. Everybody here, I am sure, knows how deeply interested I
have been in this sort of work and you will recall that Professors Hart,
Moffatt, myself and several others formed an ad hoc committee about
seven years ago [1947] to draw up general curricula of this type. From
our work came the seminar in “American Political Thought and
Institutions” which now appears to be defunct.57
Wright continued that he did not wish to seem opposed to the courses, because
he was in favor of the subject matter—they would “implement” some of his
“deepest interests”—yet he was unable to go along with the proposal and his
reason related “to fundamental principles and not to persons or personalities.”
He believed that the proposed scheme could not guarantee that a “sufficient
variety” of viewpoints would be provided. Without such safeguards, the course
might become, as they “have become in many universities, mere superficial
indoctrination centers.”58
Another absent safeguard was any regular departmental oversight. As for
the concepts taught, Wright wanted to know “whose concepts?” With history,
would the course emphasize “Oswald Spengler, Henry or Brooks Adams, Karl
Marx or Joe McCarthy?” In addition to this important consideration, the courses
had been constructed by “an ad hoc, and apparently self-constituted,
committee….” As a result, Wright stated:
I feel that the present course should not be adopted unless a definite
committee of a considerably wider range of opinion than the one indicated
here be placed in charge of the seminars and the selection of the speakers.
I say this not to narrow the range of speakers or to exclude any particular
individual. I have never opposed individuals. I have opposed the principle
of closed indoctrination. Let each point of view have a hearing but let
none of them dominate. Is not this the liberal arts tradition?59
Wright then suggested that the seminars be placed, as had been done with the
“American Thought” course, under the auspices of several departments,
including his own. In the absence of this type of oversight, the university would
suffer. Wright concluded:
If the cause of the liberal arts fails at this University, and I devoutly hope
it will not fail, will it not be because of mistaken zeal? Because a few
men, with an enthusiasm in itself wholly commendable, have
unfortunately confused the study of, let us say arts in general, with their
theory of art, of history with their theory of history, of government with
their theory of government…. Nobody, gentlemen, that I know of wants
to stop any of you from saying your say and presenting your views. But
many of us do profoundly distrust establishing so broad a course as this
without a guarantee that it shall not be dominated by any one view.60
Overall, Wright’s letter makes clear that, like Archibald Shepperson in the
General Honors debate, he was opposed to the people who had crafted the Lower
Division proposal to the degree that he, as Shepperson had put it, would “be
opposed to any plan, however good, that might be suggested.”61 Wright stated
his objections related “to fundamental principles and not to persons or
personalities” yet this statement was shown to be compromised when he
concluded that in proposing the special program “a few men” had “confused”
liberal arts education with their own theories.
Wright’s other concerns about representation and administrative structure
were certainly regarded as legitimate by some, but in the end his argument did
not carry the day; the Lower Division Special Program was approved. There
were four Lower Division Seminars offered during the mid-1950s; they were
listed in the course catalog as follows:
Lower Division Seminar 1–2: The Liberal Arts Tradition, I. Messrs. Constantine,
Dalton, Gooch, Gwathmey, Mallett and Weedon. Six semesterhours. Open to
first year men. Reading and seminar discussion of selected classics of Western
civilization. The first semester is concerned with concepts of history and tragedy;
the second with mathematics and the natural sciences.
Lower Division Seminar 3–4: The Liberal Arts Tradition, II. Messrs.
Constantine, Dalton, Gooch, Gwathmey, Mallett and Weedon. Six
semesterhours. Prerequisite: Lower Division Seminar 1–2. Reading and
seminar discussion of Western civilization. The first semester is concerned
with ethics, politics, and society; the second with poetry and philosophy.62
It had taken eighteen years and some modifications, but starting in 1953
the complete Virginia Plan, first proposed in 1935, could now be taken
by honors students at the University of Virginia. Gooch’s “departmental”
honors tutorial program for upperclassmen, outlined as the second scheme
in the Virginia Plan, had been in operation since 1937. Buchanan’s great
books scheme for underclassmen, outlined as the first scheme in the
Virginia Plan, had been modified somewhat, but essentially the gifted
students in the Lower Division Special Program would follow the ideas
proposed by Buchanan: selective seminars, use of the great books, even
common social occasions. The great books seminars for underclassmen

and the honors program for upperclassmen, originally “recommended as
an integral whole” in the Virginia Plan, finally existed together at the
The Virginia Plan: Peak and Decline

The Special Program and the Lower Division Seminars
The Lower Division Special Program for the best incoming students was in
operation for the start of the 1953–54 school year. The top five percent of the
entering class was invited to participate in this elite program and fifteen students
accepted the offer. They were enrolled in special advanced sections of
mathematics, English, chemistry, and in the lower division liberal arts seminar.
They also had to complete a foreign language course of their choice; this one
course was not included in the special program. In the autumn of 1954 these
same fifteen students took the second-year lower division liberal arts seminar
together, although their other classes were not exclusive. As was envisioned in
the Virginia Plan, these elite students were also brought together for social
occasions, although no common living arrangements were ever implemented
save that all first year students were housed in the new McCormick Road
dormitories.63
While the Virginia Plan had presented the under- and upperclassmen schemes
as an integral whole, in. practice there was not an automatic link between the
two programs. Some professors, including Gooch, thought that there was a
strong connection. Others, such as Mallett and Yalden-Thomson, the directors
of the under- and upperclassmen honors programs respectively, tended to be
more partial to their own programs. As a result, there was no presumption that
all of the students who took the special honors program as underclassmen
would take the honors tutorial program as upperclassmen. Similarly, a student
did not have to take the special program to be accepted into the tutorial program.
Of the fifteen students who started in the special program in the fall of 1953
approximately one-third enrolled in various departmental honors programs
for their last two years of college.64
One of these students was George Thomas. After completing the special
program, he enrolled in the Honors Program in Philosophy. Thomas later
became a professor of philosophy at Virginia, and eventually the chairman of
the committee which oversaw the Honors Program at the University. Thomas
argued that there was a connection between the two programs in the sense that
the two were complimentary—just as the Virginia Plan had intended. Thomas
stated that in the Lower Division Special Program the great books were
presented, not as a sacred corpus of wisdom to be passed on, but rather as a
methodological tool. According to Thomas the books taught one how to think,
not what to think. One learned how to weigh arguments, how to critique them,
and how to justify them. To Thomas the great books were the best texts for this
education and as a result, they were highly useful for students who continued
in the departmental honors program as upperclassmen.65
Full implementation of the Virginia Plan, however, was short lived. After
two years the Lower Division Special Program was discontinued and the
seminars, formerly titled the “Lower Division Seminars,” were renamed the
“Liberal Arts Seminars “the title they retained through the 1960s. Why the
special program was discontinued is a matter of speculation. It had been
proposed as an educational experiment. For the faculty, the existence of special
elite sections of the required courses was undoubtedly a burden. Another likely
reason is that the eligible students did not like having all selective classes. An
early 1950s “Report on Meeting with First-Year Men of Top Academic
Standing” noted that, “there was unanimous agreement against ‘elite’ sections
for advanced students—all felt that a very important aspect of their experience
here would be cut off if they were in any way segregated.” What does not
appear to be a reason for discontinuation of the special program was a
dissatisfaction with the “liberal arts tradition” seminars. The top students
expressed “unanimous and enthusiastic agreement that the great lack in the
first-year program is the fact that there exists no opportunities for small seminar
discussions which cut across departmental lines.”66 The special program had
established elite sections, which the students had said they did not want; but
the seminars did meet the students’ stated desire for interdepartmental seminars,
which the liberal arts seminars definitely were.
Although the Lower Division Special Program was dropped, the renamed
Liberal Arts Seminars were still geared toward the best students. Most superior
students took them anyway, even though they were not required. Indeed,
Raymond Bice argued that if one wanted to be an honors student as an
upperclassman, it was often presumed that one had taken the Lower Division/
Liberal Arts Seminars as an underclassman.67
The mid-1950s marked the high point of the liberal arts movement at the
University of Virginia. Although Buchanan’s college within the college was
never set up, the 1935 Virginia Plan had been largely enacted. First the honors
tutorial program for elite upperclassmen—Part B of the Virginia Plan—had
been adopted in 1937. Then the great books seminars and the special program
for elite underclassmen—Part A of the Virginia Plan—had been implemented
in 1953. Although the special program was abandoned after two years, the
core of the special program, that is, the Lower Division seminars, were retained
and expanded as the Liberal Arts Seminars.
The Liberal Arts Seminars
Robert Gooch taught in the Liberal Arts Seminars for more than ten years. His
syllabi for his seminar included Buchanan’s opening section from the Virginia
Plan which quoted Aristotle on the ends and means of education, which listed the
seven liberal arts, and which described the reasons for studying the great books.
Buchanan’s passage also described how the course had “been devised to bring
whatever is known of the European tradition of liberal education to bear on the
education of the best minds in the University of Virginia.” Although the Lower
Division Special Program had lapsed after only two years, the seminars were still
regarded as being for the best students, so the Virginia Plan text written by
Buchanan was still appropriate for Gooch’s syllabi. Students also received Gooch’s
essay on “The Meaning of a Liberal Arts Education” in which Gooch stated that
real learning required real work, but that real work did not guarantee
understanding: “The hope of the serious entering student therefore involves an
act of faith. If he deserves the name of student he is capable of this faith.”68
The four liberal arts seminars, one for each of the four underclass semesters,
met twice a week to discuss the weekly readings. Of the seminars, the College
Catalog stated that: “Some of the principal writings in the liberal arts tradition
of Western civilization are read and discussed by small groups. The purpose
is to develop ability to analyze and relate the basic ideas implicit in these
writings.” The first two seminars, collectively titled “The Liberal Arts
Tradition I,” were open to first-year men. Seminar 1 was “concerned with
concepts of history and tragedy;” Seminar 2 “with mathematics and the natural
sciences.” By the 1960–1961 academic year, some of the principal works
read in these seminars were:
Liberal Arts Seminar 1: Homer, Illiad, Odyssey, Herodotus, The Histories;
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound;
Sophocles, Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus; Euripides,
The Bacchae, The Trojan Women; Aristophanes, The Clouds, Lysistrata;
Plato, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo; Aristotle, The Poetics; Euclid, The
Elements, book 1.
Liberal Arts Seminar 2: Euclid, The Elements, book 5; Lucretius, On
The Nature of Things; Galileo, Two New Sciences; Newton, Principia,
selections; Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry, book 1; LaPlace, Essay on
Probabilities; Harvey, Motion of the Heart and Blood; Darwin, Origin of
the Species; Poincaré, Science and Hypothesis, Science and Method;
Dedekind, Essays on Theory of Numbers; Einstein, Relativity, The Special
and General Theory, Hilbert & Cohn-Vossen, Geometry and the
Imagination.69
The next two Seminars, 3 and 4, collectively titled “The Liberal Arts Tradition
II,” had Seminars 1 and 2 as prerequisites. Seminar 3 was “concerned with
ethics and politics”; Seminar 4 with “literature and philosophy.” Some of the
principal works read in these seminars were:
Liberal Arts Seminar 3: Plato, The Republic, Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics; Cicero, The Offices; Aquinas, political writings (selections); Dante,
The Divine Comedy: Inferno; Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel;

Machiavelli, The Prince; Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
(selections); Montaigne: Essays (selections); Hobbes, Leviathan
(selections); Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government; Hume: Of The
Original Contract; Rousseau, The Social Contract; Smith, The Wealth of
Nations (selections); The Declaration of lndependence and The
Constitution of the United States; Marx, Capital, The Communist
Manifesto (selections).
Liberal Arts Seminar 4: The Bible, The Books of job and Isaiah; Plato,
Phaedrus, Symposium; Virgil, The Aeneid; Augustine, The Confessions;
Bonaventura, The Mind’s Road to God; Aquinas, Of The Teacher; Dante,
The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio; Descartes, Discourse on Method;
Marlowe, Tragical History of Dr. Faustus; Goethe, Faust, Part I; Milton,
Paradise Lost; Volatire, Candide; Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion; Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals;
Melville, Billy Budd; Tolstoy, War and Peace; Kierkegaard: Fear and
Trembling; Eliot, The Waste Land; Stravinsky, The Poetics of Music;
Auden, Christmas Oratorio.70
Students also had weekly writing assignments. One year, for example, the
question on Lucretius was: “Does Lucretius’ attitude toward death (pp. 133–
138) have emotional as well as rational appeal? Discuss this aspect and compare
with the Judaic-Christian attitude.”71 For Lavoisier: “Galileo and Newton are
often referred to as the founders of modern science, Lavoisier as the founder of
modern chemistry. How might Lavoisier have been influenced by Galileo and
Newton? How might Galileo and Newton and therefore Lavoisier, have been
influenced by Socrates?”72 Finally, an Einstein question was: “‘God is deep but
He is not malicious’ is the translation of the motto Einstein placed over the
mantle of a faculty meeting room at Princeton. Please discuss.”73
The writing assignments for each week were also changed each year. The
following, for example, were the writing assignments given in Liberal Arts
Seminar 2 between 1954 and 1958 on Harvey:
1954:Poincaré in Chapter IX of his Science and Hypothesis affirms that
“Experiment is the sole source of truth. It alone can teach us
something new; it alone can give us certainty.” Apply this
affirmation to Harvey’s The Motion of the Heart and Blood.
1955:With what degree of precision does Harvey appear to employ
“demonstration ,” “argument,” “proof”?
1956:Comment on the attitudes of Galileo and Harvey toward Aristotle.
1957:In Chapter XIV, Harvey sums up his idea of the circulation of the
blood: “It has been shown by reason and experiment that blood by
the beat of the ventricles…” What significance do you attach to
clinical observation in this argument?
1958:A current biographer of Harvey, Chauvais, states that “Harvey’s

method was based on experiment only,…experiment with no a
priori postulate accepted as certain or even probable.” Discuss.74
The semester concluded with a written comprehensive examination. Finally,

the liberal arts program maintained some of the social comraderie advocated
in the Virginia Plan by hosting a dinner in the Rotunda at the end of the year
for the faculty and students in the program.75
Its work accomplished, the Lower Division Committee was dissolved in
1955. A new Department of Liberal Arts was created to oversee the liberal arts
seminars. This “department” was really more of an interdepartmental program
than a traditional department. Marcus Mallett served as the chairman of the
Liberal Arts Department and he was “a salubrious influence on his students.”76
By the 1959–1960 academic year, these seminars were so popular that sixteen
faculty members were teaching in them.77 The seminars were also expanded;
Liberal Arts Seminars 5 and 6 were introduced for the 1960–1961 academic
year. Titled “The Liberal Arts Tradition III,” these seminars were “concerned
with irrationality and infinity in literature, mathematics, philosophy, psychology,
science and theology.”78 Finally, in a distinct departure from earlier practice,
in the early 1960s the seminars were made available to all undergraduates, not
just the better underclassmen. The belief that liberal education was important
for all students, and not just the better ones, had finally become manifest in
Virginia’s Liberal Arts Seminars.
While this departmental independence was deemed desirable during the
1950s by its promoters, it ultimately proved detrimental to the great books
program in the 1960s. As faculty time became increasingly expensive some
departments refused to release their faculty for seminar teaching because
they wanted the full earning power of their faculty to be devoted to their
home department. Because each seminar needed two faculty members, this
trend created a real faculty shortage for the seminars. Increasingly, faculty
who wished to participate had to do so gratis.79 Faculty availability might
have been resolved, but there was another change of equal if not greater
threat to the liberal arts seminars: a lack of student interest in the great books
themselves.
The student protests of the later 1960s and early 1970s had prompted a
series of actions and reactions in the curriculum. Calls for socially “relevant”
education—“education capable of providing leverage against society’s most
immediate pressing needs”—resulted in the elimination of many curricular
requirements. Additional room for practical and frankly political considerations
usually came at the expense of liberal education, which was often pejoratively
branded as “elitist.” The Carnegie Council study of educational reforms made
between 1967 and 1974 concluded that:
major curricular change [during those years] was seldom accompanied

by extended faculty consideration of the larger aims of collegiate education
or judgments about what knowledge was most worth having. All too
frequently, rather, changes were framed by the exigencies of the moment
and by immediate political expediency.80
The historical synthesis of Julie Reuben introduced in Chapter 1 suggests that

such an outcome is not surprising given the lack of agreed-upon standards by
which to judge competing claims. This lack of consensus arose, not just from
differing philosophies of education, but also from the structure of universities.
Put simply, schools were no longer cohesive communities of scholars, but instead
groups of sets of scholars. Universities, in the words of Clark Kerr, had become
“multiversities.”81 The lack of cohesion in the curriculum reflected the lack of
cohesion in the university overall.
Like schools around the nation, Virginia underwent exceptional change in
that turbulent era. The university’s gentlemanly character, and many of the
interests that had sustained it, receded. Although the liberal arts seminars
remained in a transformed state as “university seminars,” they lost entirely
their great books focus, becoming, instead, seminars on vogue interests. For
the 1969–1970 academic year the most popular seminars included: “races,
ghettos, and revolutions,” “radicalism in politics,” “the study of the future
processes of social, economic, and political change,” “the nature and meaning
of revolution,” “psychiatry, morality, and the law,” “law and civil disobedience,”
and “nonsense: its meaning and effect.”82 These changes left Mallett, still in
charge of the seminars, a bitter man.83 The great books seminars, first proposed
in the 1935 Virginia Plan, and first offered by Stringfellow Barr in 1951, had,
by 1970, disappeared from Grounds.
The Honors Program Revisited: 1960

The other part of the Virginia Plan—the honors tutorial program—fared better,
but not without its own challenges. In 1960 David Yalden-Thomson, who had
replaced Robert Gooch as the chairman of the Committee on Honors Courses,
replied to a memorandum from mathematics professor and Dean of the
College, William Duren. Duren wanted to eliminate the honors program. He
believed that the program was elitist; that it was inefficient with its one to one
student-faculty ratio; and that its pedagogical method was too often
incompatible with the laboratory sciences.84 Additional criticisms were that
the program had too few participating students and departments—some faculty
felt “shut out of the fraternity”—and that the admission standards to honors
work were too low.85
In his reply, Yalden-Thomson proceeded methodically to answer these
criticisms. Regarding cost, the sole pecuniary charge to the University was the
cost of bringing external examiners to Charlottesville for a day to conduct the

Final Oral Examination. Otherwise the University provided no added staff,
added salary, or reduced teaching load to the departments and faculty who
worked in the Honors Program. Yalden-Thomson noted one significant expense:
“the energies and time of those who have been tutoring. To undertake tutorial
work in addition to a regular teaching load is of course to reduce the time and
effort which a scholar might be devoting to research instead.”
As to the criticism, made by Duren, that the program was a “failure,” Yalden-
Thomson replied that small numbers did not in and of themselves indicate
success or failure. It was noted that there were forty students in the program,
spread across eight departments, at that time. More pointedly, given the lack
of administrative support from the University, “it might appear remarkable…that
any Honors work was being done at all.”
The criticism that Honors work was better suited to some subjects than
others had a more ambiguous answer. While some in the sciences had made
this claim, Yalden-Thomson noted that individual or seminar honors work was
being successfully conducted in laboratory sciences at Cambridge and
Swarthmore. Thus, “wherever intrinsic excellence of education is the
desideratum, there Honors work is appropriate.”
As for the complaint that certain departments were excluded from
participation in the Honors Program, Yalden-Thomson noted that the program
was completely voluntary—students and departments could participate, or
not, as they wished. Moreover, up to that point the Committee on Honors
Programs had never rejected a department’s program. The program, save a
few key points like the total absence of class requirements, had been relatively
loosely defined.
Finally, regarding the criticism that student admission standards were too
low, Yalden-Thomson pointed to the low number of participants and to the fact
that departmental faculty members determined which students would be
admitted to the program. If students were not honors material, why would
faculty members agree to tutor them on their own time?
Looking forward, Yalden-Thomson and the Committee on Honors Degrees
argued against the temptation to “hybridize” the program by adding course
requirements to the last two years of college for honors students. The committee
had serious objections to this proposal, arguing, as Gooch had done in 1934–
35, that the two systems were incompatible and attempting to combine honors
work and course work for credit, as had happened at other institutions, would
“corrupt and probably destroy” the honors work. Yalden-Thomson argued that
although “work corresponding roughly to the Liberal Arts Seminars in this
College” and in “Great Books” courses was often termed “honors work,” the
Honors Degree at the University of Virginia should be limited to upperclass
work designed “to prepare a student for a set of final examinations at the end
of two years of directed study.” This final point was thought to be critical:
“The end—the purpose—of honors work is preparation for a Final Honors

examination. Tutoring is not more than a means to that end. This is also the
explanation of the genesis of this method of teaching, namely, that it was thought
to be the most effective means of preparing a student in the field in which he
was to be examined.”86
Yalden-Thomson closed by noting that Dean Duren had requested that the
Honors Program adapt in ways to make it “more convenient” to account for
students in the registration system. Yalden-Thomson replied that it was
“parodical” to suggest that “an educational system of the University should be
changed for the greater convenience of administrators.” Instead he proposed
that the Honors Program should be encouraged. After all, noted
YaldenThomson, Dr. Aydelotte, former Director of the Institute for Advanced
Studies, had “described [the program] as ‘well conceived’ and ‘an outstanding
example of the adaptation of the honors idea to the conditions of a state uni
versity.’”87
The Echols Scholars Program

Only a few months later, Dean Duren revived Marcus Mallett’s ideas manifest
in the Lower Division Special Program. Acknowledging that “a special honors-
type program was needed to take effect when the student enters College,” in
May 1960 Duren announced that the University would be instituting the Echols
Scholars Program, named for the late Professor William H. Echols.88 The
program was remarkably similar to Mallett’s 1953 Lower Division Special
Program. Using Aydelotte’s language, it was stated that the Echols Scholars
Program was designed to free the better student “from the standard ‘lock
step.’” Although Echols Scholars were eventually relieved of course
prescriptions, in 1960 all first-year students had several requirements: “At
the present time the five first-year courses consist of: English 1–2, Mathematics
1–2, Language, Science, Elective (usually Liberal Arts Seminar 1–2 for
students with high ability).” To open up one more elective for the Echols
Scholar so that he might “anticipate his specialization” or “invest it in his
general education,” the faculty was asked, and they agreed, to drop the English
1 and Math 1 requirements. This permitted Echols Scholars to take: “Math 2
and English 2, Language, Science, Elective, Elective (Liberal Arts Seminar
will be strongly advised.)” In line with Mallett’s special program of seven
years earlier, departments were asked to support the Echols experiment “by
providing special sections or such adaptations of their normal offerings as
they judge appropriate.”89
The curricular similarities to the special program were mirrored by
other similarities. The first group of Echols Scholars was elite, numbering
just thirty-five. The new program also achieved the goal of common living
arrangements for elite students first expressed by Buchanan in 1935. The
students lived together in Echols House, one of the new residential

facilities.90 In summary, the current day Echols Program, with its complete
electivism, does not resemble the structure outlined by Buchanan.
However, most of the ideas embodied in the original Echols Program were
rooted in the underclassmen scheme of the Virginia Plan, even though it
was an indirect, not a direct, result of the Plan.
The Honors Program Revisited: 1968

By 1968 the Honors Program at Virginia was again under pressure. Francis
Hart, chairman of the Committee on Special Programs (CSP), which had
replaced the Committee on Honors Degrees, wrote another defense. Drawing
on the work of fellow committee members and on “the testimony of such
authorities as Messrs. Gooch, Yalden-Thomson, and Mallett,” Hart proposed
to respond to new conditions. They were: “(1) the expansion of the program
during the past few years; (2) the evidence of growing interest among
nonparticipating departments; (3) the desire of some participating departments
to carry on their own programs regardless of CSP policies and guidelines.”91
The program had grown. Whereas there were thirty-two students enrolled
in the Honors Program in 1960–61, there were eighty-seven enrolled in 1967–
68. In spite of rising numbers, the CSP stated that the Honors program “must
in fact and not just in pretense be a single, flexibly uniform one, supervised
effectually by the College faculty through its elected CSP.” In order for a
uniform system to exist, the CSP believed that the Honors Program had to be
more flexible. The most significant change, one to which Gooch and
YaldenThomson had always been fundamentally opposed, was the decision to
permit up to one half of an honors student’s time to be devoted to required
course work, providing all of this work would be tested in the Final Honors
Examinations. Of course, departments could still allow less or no course work.
A second change was that, while external examiners were to continue to be
used for the Finals, departments, because they had worked with honors students,
could inform the examiners of the student’s preparation.92 A third change was
to list honors work and rough hour equivalents, although no grades, on the
honors students’ transcripts. Finally, with shades of Gooch’s unsuccessful 1952
proposal for a General Honors Program, the CSP noted “the regrettable failure
so far to create interdepartmental honors programs.” The CSP concluded that
“if the College Honors Program is ever to approach its full potential, it must
include provision for interdisciplinary and college-wide Honors activities.”93
Although the CSP suggested that “Honors work, where departmental
conditions and CSP policies permit, seems likely to expand considerably,”
exactly the opposite happened over the next dozen years. Between 1968 and
1981, the number of participating departments slipped from eleven to three,
and from eighty-seven students to fifteen.94 The decline came about largely for
perennial reasons. Some professors did not believe in the honors approach,
arguing, as Buchanan had in the 1930s, that undergraduates were not ready to
be studying a subject at such an intensive level and that such work belonged
instead at the graduate level. Classics professor emeritus Arthur Stocker noted
that this was the objection that kept the Classics Department from ever offering
an honors program.95 In its 1968 report, the CSP had acknowledged that: “The
Honors candidate does develop critical independence at the expense of breadth;
his relative inexposure to predigested knowledge or interpretation may cause
temporary difficulty or cause him to ‘test’ poorly” on the GRE.96
There were other administrative reasons for the decline of the Honors
Program. Faculty who taught in the Honors Program invested a great deal of
time, yet received no course credit from the University. Moreover, it was the
sole method by which a student could earn a degree with honors at the
University.97 Departments, especially those that did not believe that the Honors
Program worked well in their discipline, nevertheless wanted a way to recognize
their best students. When the University adopted the option of awarding degrees
with distinction, most departments dropped the Honors Program and its more
demanding obligations.98 The new Distinguished Majors Program featured both
college and departmental requirements. Distinguished majors students had to
have a minimum 3.4 G.P.A., they had to write a senior thesis, and they had to
take advanced courses. The individual departments determined their own
requirements for a student to graduate with highest distinction, high distinction,
distinction, or pass.99 Thus, while there were pedagogical objections to the
honors program, such as the belief that it was too intensive too early in a
student’s academic career, and that it was not applicable to certain disciplines,
the majority of the objections were often based on personal and institutional
factors: too time-intensive, no credit, no pay, exclusive, and so on.
According to Glenn Kessler, philosophy professor and Chairman of the
College Honors Program in the early 1980s, the program had suffered largely
because of the college faculty: “It’s a vicious circle. The departments aren’t
interested in joining or in promoting the program because there’s no student
interest. And there’s no student interest because they’re not made aware of
it.”100 The Economics Department dropped the Honors Program in the early
1980s because, according to Economics Honors Program chairman John
Pettengill, “There’s no one on the faculty interested in taking over the
program.”101 This left just Government and Philosophy, the two departments
that had always had the strongest honors programs and which had been a part
of the program since its start in the 1937–1938 academic year. Both programs
held celebrations on Grounds for their Fiftieth Anniversaries in 1988, and these
two remaining departments, with strong student and alumni approval, have
maintained vital Honors Programs to the current day.102 At the beginning of
the twenty-first century they are all that officially remain of the Virginia Plan
at the University of Virginia.
Conclusion
An Unfinished Story
“The consequences have been a radical reform of teaching and learning in a small
province of the modern academy.”
—Scott Buchanan
The Virginia Plan, the Liberal Arts Movement, and Their Influence
Looking back in 1967, Stringfellow Barr stated that “the awful thing is that
liberal education has been so punk in my lifetime.”1 Perhaps. His hope that
higher education would turn away from the elective system and embrace his
and others’ prescriptive great books model has had marginal effect by some
measures. The elective system unquestionably remains the dominant curricular
mode in American higher education. Required courses and distribution
requirements temper electivism, but those institutions, such as St. John’s, that
strongly limit electivism are noteworthy because of their rarity. The “great
books,” too, are a minority curricular presence. Indeed, since the late 1960s,
the very concept of a Western canon has been under assault.
Yet by other measures the Virginia Plan and the liberal arts movement have
been remarkably influential. The Virginia Plan, which effected a groundbreaking
expansion of the great books corpus by adding scientific and mathematical
classics to the literary and historical canon, helped make the reading of primary
sources both acceptable and desirable. In The Opening of the American Mind
Lawrence Levine notes the remarkable fact that when Charles Eliot became
the president of Harvard in 1869 the College had one history professor, Henry
Torrey, who “was responsible for ancient, medieval, and modern history and
American constitutional history, all of which he taught out of textbooks.”2 The
nineteenth-century notion that the classics should be the preserve of the scholar,
and that the textbook should be the primary pedagogical instrument for teaching
students, was discredited by the liberal arts movement.
The results of this change were profound. Historians John Brubacher and
Willis Rudy note that the effort to have students “rely on books rather than
lectures…encouraged them to go to the library with syllabus or bibliography
in hand to examine numerous sources, many of them original.” Brubacher and
Rudy also note that “colleges unwilling to adopt the ‘Great Books’ program of
St. John’s nevertheless welcomed a wider reading of classic authors within the
frame of reference of their own campuses.” A related result of the liberal arts
movement, taken for granted in the second half of the twentieth century but
197
unheard of in the nineteenth, was the enhanced importance of the college library
with its move “to establish open bookshelves, increase the space allocated to
reserve books, and multiply the number of duplicates.”3
The liberal arts movement also contributed to the effort to make sure that
the Germanic lecture model was supplemented with the English tutorial and
seminar models. Similarly, honors instruction, which began in the 1920s at
Swarthmore and advanced at Virginia, grew during the period of the liberal
arts movement, especially after World War II when “large-scale promotion of
honors programs occurred.” In particular, “momentum came from the formation
of the Inter-University Council on the Superior Student and the newsletter it
published as a clearinghouse on honors programs in hundreds of colleges over
the country.”4
Ironically, the “culture wars” of the later twentieth century have demonstrated
the tenacity of both the honors and the great books approaches to higher
education. Twenty years after Barr’s remark about liberal education Chicago
professor Allan Bloom, arguing that the best way to remedy academia’s aridity
and political correctness was through “the good old Great Books approach,”
would re-invigorate a national discussion regarding the best means of liberally
educating America’s students.5 The particulars change with time, but the central
issues of what to teach—and why—remain as pertinent today as when the
Virginia Plan was drafted in 1935. The argument of the Virginia Plan for a
curriculum centered on the great books and honors work has remained a vital
and contentious part of the larger debates concerning college curricula for
more than sixty years, having neither remade academia in its image, nor faded
as a footnote in the history of American higher education. Instead the ideas in
the Virginia Plan have endured.
Correcting the Historiography
This study has endeavored to correct the incomplete place accorded the
University of Virginia and its 1935 Virginia Plan in the liberal arts movement.
Clearly the University of Virginia, as noted at the time by Walter Lippmann and
Frank Aydelotte, was central to the liberal arts movement. This study has also
corrected the often inaccurate portrayal of the Virginia Plan.
As seen throughout the book, many historical accounts neglect entirely
Virginia’s role in the movement. Brubacher and Rudy’s statement that the
great books program was, “spawned at Columbia, encouraged at Chicago, and
actually put into operation at St. John’s College in Maryland” for example,
was noted in the Introduction.6 Likewise, historian Bruce Kimball, discussing
the rise of honors programs, notes that “Wells, Franklin and Marshall, Colgate,
Reed, Southwestern at Memphis—followed the example of Swarthmore in
instituting honors courses, tutorials, seminars, and comprehensive or general
examinations.”7 Virginia’s honors program is completely ignored by Kimball,
even though the progenitor of the honors program, Swarthmore president Frank
Conclusion • 199
Aydelotte, argued in 1944 that Virginia had “taken [a] position of leadership in
the movement.”8
Even accounts which do recognize Virginia’s role, such as the one by
J.Winfree Smith described in Chapter 3, do so only in a propaedeutic way.
Indeed, even the most conscientious histories, such as the one by Amy Kass,
have failed to appreciate the work and results at Virginia that followed the
Liberal Arts, Incorporated debacle of 1947. Her assertion that “the last effort
to institutionalize the ideas underlying the [Liberal Arts] Movement was made
in the late 1940s” has been shown to be incorrect.9 As shown in Chapter 6, the
curricular experiments and courses implemented at Virginia in the 1950s were
a significant part of the movement, albeit not enduring ones.
Also, Kass and others who have treated the great books part of the liberal
arts movement have largely ignored the place of honors tutorial work in the
philosophy of the movement. Part of the significance of the Virginia Plan was
that it combined both great books seminar work and honors tutorial work. The
other formative institutions in the liberal arts movement, namely, Columbia,
Chicago, and St. John’s did not seek to the same degree to merge these two
types of instruction. They all had great books seminars and elements of the
Oxbridge system, but not one-on-one honors work with capstone Final
Examinations. The material studied, the skills developed, and the discipline
acquired in the honors program, liberal by their very nature, all suggest that a
more capacious definition of the liberal arts movement is required. The liberal
arts movement was more than the great books movement; it also included the
Oxbridge pedagogy of tutorials and final honors examinations.
Broadening the Argument
This study has shown that the responses to and results of the liberal arts
movement were varied and more complex than as presented in the conventional
historiography. When educational historian Frederick Rudolph stated that “a
return to ancient Greece and Rome was not an idea that recommended itself to
most educators and observers,” he misapprehended events in two ways.10 First,
those who objected to the curriculum itself, such as John Dewey and Sidney
Hook, usually charged that the liberal artists were neo-medievalists, not
classicists. Second, many of the objections had little if anything to do with the
curricula proposed. Indeed, in 1946 when consideration of the underclassmen
great books part of the Virginia Plan was renewed by Robert Gooch, Dean of
the College Ivey Lewis, and others at Virginia who believed that the time was
right to finally implement the rest of the Virginia Plan, Lewis wrote, “I have
heard no expression of criticism from professors, and believe the faculty would
desire to develop further the type of instruction given in ‘Honors’ or ‘Great
Books’ courses.”11
While educational philosophy did play a role in some objections to the
Virginia Plan and the larger liberal arts movement, there was often a combination
of personal and institutional factors that played equally into the outcomes
resulting from the Plan and the movement. Resistance to the liberal artists
themselves was a significant factor in objections to the proposed curricular
changes. It will be recalled that Archibald Shepperson and David McCord
Wright at Virginia both came to the point where, as Shepperson put it, “I should
be opposed to any plan, however good, that might be suggested” as long as the
liberal artists supported it.12
Other objections had to do with organization. Fredson Bowers at the
University of Virginia, although against Robert Gooch’s 1952 General Honors
proposal, stated that he had “some sympathy” with the concept of general
education, but he believed, in that case, that such education should come in the
first two years of college, not the last two.13 Additionally, some objections had
to do with pedagogy. Philosophy professor Arthur Stocker noted that certain
faculty members believed that the Honors Program introduced concentration
too soon, before enough breadth had been acquired. Faculty jealousy also mixed
with the pedagogical objections. The non-elite students, and the faculty who
taught them, would potentially suffer second class status if the Virginia Plan
proposals were adopted.14
In addition to actual objections, other important institutional factors, such
as funding, played a significant role in the final decisions to adopt or reject
curricular proposals put forth by the liberal artists. The strongest example, of
course, is the fate of Scott Buchanan’s Virginia Plan great books scheme for
Virginia underclassmen in 1936, which ostensibly foundered because President
Newcomb could not afford to pay for it.
In summary, and in an expansion of the existing literature, the archival
evidence demonstrates that philosophical, personal, and institutional factors
all contributed significantly to the history of the Virginia Plan specifically, and
the liberal arts movement more generally.
The Typicality of Virginias Experience
For many years, the great books Liberal Arts Seminars and the tutorial Honors
Program that developed at Virginia both retained the elitist philosophy put forth
in the Virginia Plan in 1935. While Hutchins at Chicago and Barr and Buchanan
at St. John’s argued stridently that liberal education, derived through the study
of great books, was an essential education for all, the manifestations of the
Virginia Plan, as they were implemented at Virginia, were never so intended.
The great books program for underclassmen had been proposed as a “college
within a college” for honors students and the tutorial program for upperclassmen
was likewise designed for a select few. Aydelotte, in his discussion of honors
work, stated that some objected to honors work because “such a system is not
democratic.” He stated that:
All students who enter the College, it is argued, have a right to the same
training; it is unfair to select out a few and to give them advantages which
Conclusion • 201
are denied to others. Such an objection seems to me to imply a desire, not

for intellectual democracy, but for intellectual communism. The fact that
all men are equal before the law does not mean that they are equal in
Greek or Mathematics… Equality of opportunity is all that a university
can be expected to provide: The responsibility for measuring up to that
opportunity or failing to do so must rest upon the individual.15
Virginia’s position on the education of its best students has likewise been elite
in this sense.
In the Introduction to this study it was proffered that the University of Virginia
was more representative of higher education’s response to the liberal arts
movement than that of the other formative institutions because Virginia’s
reaction to the movement was more modest than that of Chicago, Columbia,
or St. John’s. In short, Virginia did not radically alter its undergraduate course
of study for all students. Its honors work was strictly for elite students. In this
sense the University of Virginia was typical of institutions of higher education
in the relative modesty of its actual curricular changes. Like Virginia, most
American colleges and universities continued to base their undergraduate
instruction on a mix of prescription and election in subjects divided into
departmental divisions.
On the other hand, Virginia was rather atypical relative to the other formative
institutions of the liberal arts movement in its adherence to an elite “honors”
model of liberal education. Indeed, along with the other formative institutions,
additional schools had been making democratizing adjustments for all students
for years. Princeton, for example, began requiring a thesis of all seniors in
1925. Yale soon made the same requirement, thereby, as Rudolph put it,
“generalizing and democratizing a practice that in its origins had been intended
for the most able and the most motivated.”16 This practice of making more
modest but universal changes was fairly common. Ironically then, Virginia’s
role, because of its elitism, also made it rather atypical compared to other
colleges and universities.
Contemporary Virginia and the “Jeffersonian Curriculum”

In an introductory brochure, the philosophy faculty claim that:
Graduation from the Honors program in Philosophy will give one an
intellectual experience as close to that achieved by Rhodes Scholars at
Oxford University as is possible in the United States. Indeed, it is likely
that no other college in the United States offers a tutorial program that
fully duplicates the Oxford tutorial system.
For the few students who study in the program today, the results are presumably
as superb as those self-reported by the alumni at the Fiftieth Reunion of the
program in 1988. It is nevertheless remarkable that more than sixty years after
the original Virginia Plan was conceived—with all the promise it possessed
both as understood by contemporaneous commentators, and during a brief period
in the 1950s when it was fully implemented at Virginia—that today the Plan’s
manifestations at Virginia are so few. The non-departmental great books seminars
are gone, and of the many departments that offered tutorial work, only
Philosophy and Government and Foreign Affairs still adhere to the original
vision of the Virginia Plan.
These changes notwithstanding, the issue of what constitutes the best
undergraduate liberal education is a perennial one. As its senior class gift, the
University of Virginia Class of 1998 decided to donate money to promote a
“Jeffersonian curriculum,” which it claimed was to be modeled on the Virginia
Plan of 1935. Even more striking is that this gift designation was chosen over
the other final possibility, the promotion of a diversity initiative. The actors do
change, but in many ways the issues do not. After several years, what will
come of the Jeffersonian curriculum initiative remains uncertain. If it remains
merely an idea not fully adopted by the University, then it will join a long list
of well-intentioned but ultimately sidelined efforts at curricular innovation at
Virginia. On the other hand, if adopted it may mean that path-breaking
developments from both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries will figure
in a unique way in the curriculum at the University of Virginia in the twenty-
first century.
An Unfinished Story
Recalling a conversation held with Hutchins in 1937, Barr stated that Hutchins
feared Barr and Buchanan might well fail in their attempt to establish their
program at St. John’s. Barr recalled, “[Hutchins] thought I might fall on my
nose. And so did I. The other thing I thought was, if we succeed, it will spread
like wildfire…. And I was wrong on both counts. I did not fail and it did not
spread.”17
The philosophy embodied in the liberal arts movement will probably never
completely triumph or fail. Rather, as has been the case since the 1930s, its
influence will wax and wane for multiple reasons: philosophical, pedagogical,
personal, and institutional. What is certain is that the liberal arts movement
has fostered a continuing legacy, one which has been most significant in
American colleges and universities. In spite of their detractors, the great books,
honors programs, and especially the liberal arts are widely promoted throughout
the nation. Created in large part by the Virginia Plan, the final outcome of the
liberal arts movement has been, and remains, an unfinished story, but its
importance in higher education is undeniable.
Sources
Interviews
Anderson, Samuel A. (Pete) II , Architect for the University, University of Virginia. Interview by
author, May 12,1999, Charlottesville, VA.
Bice, Raymond C., Professor of Psychology Emeritus, and University Historian, University of
Virginia. Interview by author, May 10,1999, Charlottesville, VA.
Blackford, Staige D., Editor, Virginia Quarterly Review, University of Virginia. Interview by
author, June7, 1999, Charlottesville, VA.
Hyman, Sidney, Senior Fellow, Great Books Foundation, Chicago, IL. Interview by author, August
24, 2001, Chicago,IL.
Marshall, John, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia. Interview by author, June 9,1999,
Charlottesville, VA.
Moran, Charles E., University Historian Emeritus, University of Virginia. Interview by author,
June 3, 1999, CharIottesville, VA.
Nelson, Charles A., Editor and Visitor Emeritus, St. John’s College. Interview by author, August
28, 1999, Croton-on-Hudson, NY.
Olinger, Chauncey G., Jr., Investment broker and Columbia University oral historian. Telephone
interview by author, June 7, 1999, New York, NY; and, Interview by author, August 28,1999,
Riverdale, NY.
Poe, L. Harvey, Jr., Lawyer and St. John’s College Tutor Emeritus. Interview by author, April 19,
2000, Washington, D.C.
Ryan, Alan, Warden, New College, Oxford University. Interview by author, March 22, 2000,
Stocker, Arthur F., Classics Professor Emeritus, University of Virginia. Interview by author, June
3, 1999, Charlottesville, VA.
Thomas, George B., Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia. Interview by author, June
18, 1999, Charlottesville, VA.
Archival Collections
Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Stringfellow Barr Papers
Robert Gooch Papers
Colgate Darden Papers
John Newcomb Papers
University Archives
University Archives Record Groups:
2/1/2.491 II Report of the Committee on Honors Courses; Barr—Newcomb correspondence
2/1/2.491 III Barr—Newcomb correspondence; 1937 Committee on Honors
2/1/2.551 I President’s Papers (1946)
2/1/2.551 II President’s Papers (1947)
2/1/2.552 President’s Papers (1948)
2/1/2.561 President’s Papers (1949)
2/1/2.562 Committee on the Liberal Arts; Ivey Lewis Papers
2/1/2.591 Honors Courses debates
19/2/6.781 Bulletins of the Liberal Arts Committee
19/2/7 (4903a) Faculty Committee on the College
19/3/4.541 (4903) University Senate; Committee on the Reorganization of the College
203
204 • Sources
20/18/1.771 Committee on the Future of the University (1972)

20/29 1935 Curriculum Revision
20/59 Committee on the Liberal Arts
20/61 (7986) Committee on the Lower Division
21/60.811 Robert Gooch
21/60.821 Robert Gooch
21/17 Stringfellow Barr (empty)
26/9 Colgate Darden—Oral History Interview (n.d.)
26/11 Stringfellow Barr—Oral History Interview (1972)
26/13 Robert Gooch—Oral History Interview (1973)
5547d Robert Gooch Papers
7690 Virginius Dabney Papers
8053 Stringfellow Barr Papers
Greenfield Library, St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD

Stringfellow Barr Papers
Collection includes the following transcripts of interviews with Barr:
March 14,1968 by Frank Kelly, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 45 pages
September 12, 1972 by Douglas Tanner, University of Virginia Oral History, 32 pages
June 29, 1975 by Francis Mason, 82 pages
July 6, 1975 by Charles and Mary Wiseman, 75 pages
July 13, 1975 by Allan Hoffman, 78 pages
July 27, 1975 by Francis Mason and Howard Baldwin, 57 pages
August 3, 1975 by Allan Hoffman, 104 pages
August 24, 1975 by Allan Hoffman, 80 pages
October 5, 1975 by Francis Mason and Allan Hoffman, 55 pages
October 12, 1975 by Harris Wofford and Stephen Benedict, 137 pages
November 22, 1975 by David Rea and Allan Hoffman, 155 pages
Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, MD

Stringfellow Barr Papers—St. John’s College. Series No. T1404
Collection includes the following transcript of an interview with Barr: 1972 by Chauncey
G.Olinger, Jr., 122 pages
Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Board of Trustees Minutes
Mortimer J.Adler Papers
President’s Papers 1925–1945
President ’s Papers 1940–1963
Robert M. Hutchins Papers and Addenda
Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Madison, WI

Alexander Meiklejohn Papers
Collection includes Barr, Hutchins, Education, and Universities and Colleges, as subjects
Notes
Introduction
1. Walter Lippman, “The St. John’s Program,” reprinted from “Today and Tomorrow,” New
York Herald Tribune, December 27, 1938. Alexander Meiklejohn Papers, Box 57, Folder 4,
Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Madison, WI.
2. The liberal arts movement will be defined more fully later in this introduction. Some of the
best examples of dialectical reasoning, that is, using logic to discern truth from error,
especially in matters of opinion, can be found in the Socratic dialogues. Socrates’ questioning
of the slave boy in the Meno is perhaps the most famous.
3. David Denby, Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other
Indestructible Writers of the Western World (New York: Touchstone, 1996), pp. 11,19.
4. Justus Buchler, “Reconstruction in the Liberal Arts,” in History of Columbia College on
Morningside Heights, edited by Dwight Miner (New York: Columbia Press, 1954); Daniel
Bell, The Reforming of General Education (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966);
Lionel Trilling, “Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture,” in The Last Decade: Essays
and Reviews, 1965–75 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979); Gerald Graff,
Professing Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987;
pp. 132–136); Timothy Cross, An Oasis of Order: The Core Curriculum at Columbia College
(New York: Office of the Dean, Columbia College, 1995); John Van Doren, “The Beginnings
of the Great Books Movement at Columbia,” Columbia: the Magazine of Columbia
University, Winter 2001,26; Carl Hovde, “What Columbia College is Known For,” Columbia:
the Magazine of Columbia University, Winter 2001, 32.
5. Michael R.Harris, Five Counterrevolutionists in Higher Education (Corvallis: Oregon State
University Press, 1970); Robert M.Hutchins, Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal
Education (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954); Mortimer Adler, Philosopher At Large:
An Intellectual Autobiography (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1977), and A Second
Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical Reflections of a Philosopher at
Large (New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., 1992); Harry Ashemore, Unseasonable Truths:
The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1989); Milton
Mayer, Robert Maynard Hutchins: A Memoir (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1993); William H.McNeill, Hutchins’ University: A Memoir of the University of Chicago,
1929–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Mary Ann Dzuback, Robert M.
Hutchins: Portrait of an Educator (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); F.Champion
Ward, ed. The Idea and Practice of General Education: An Account of the College of the
University of Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950, 1992).
6. Harris Wofford, Jr., ed. Embers of The World: Conversations with Scott Buchanan (Santa
Barbara: The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1969); Charles A.Nelson,
Scott Buchanan: A Centennial Appreciation of His Life and Work (Annapolis: St. John’s
College Press, 1995), and Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of His Life and
Work (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1997), and “The Barr/Buchanan Connection”
(Annapolis: St. John’s College, 1997, unpublished); Richard E.Miller, As If Learning
Mattered: Reforming Higher Education (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); J.Winfree
Smith, A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St. John’s Program (Annapolis:
St. John’s College Press, 1983).
7. Bruce Kimball, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education
(New York: The College Board, 1995), p. 3.
8. John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition: A History of American
Colleges and Universities, 4th ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997), p. 274.
9. Frank Aydelotte, Breaking the Academic Lockstep: The Development of Honors Work in
American Colleges and Universities (New York: Harper & Bros., 1944), pp. 91–92.
205
206 • Notes
10. “New College to be Founded in Berkshires,” Pittsfield (Mass.) Berkshire Evening Eagle,
December 9, 1946, 1–2. Meiklejohn Papers, Box 57, Folder 4, Wisconsin Historical Society
Archives, Madison, WI.
11. “Report of the Committee on Honors Courses to the President of the University.” RG 2/1/
2.491 H. Box 13, 1934–36 Honors Courses—Reports of the Committee. Special Collections,
Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. The omission of the honors
scheme is perhaps indicative of Buchanan’s, and to a lesser degree Barr’s, bias toward the
great books scheme in the Virginia Plan. Interestingly, Barr’s copy of the Virginia Plan,
now located at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, does not contain Appendix B.
12. See J.Winfree Smith, A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St. John’s
Program (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1983), pp. 18–19.
13. Amy Apfel Kass, Radical Conservatives for Liberal Education (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins
University, 1973; [Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1973]), p. 134.
14. Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York: A.Knopf,
1962; reprint, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990), p. 480. (page citation is to
the reprint edition.)
15. Richard Miller, As If Learning Mattered: Reforming Higher Education (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1998), p. 25.
16. “Report of the Committee on Honors Courses,” Special Collections, University of Virginia.
17. Laurence Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1965), p. 338 n. 236.
18. Kass, Radical Conservatives, p. 1, abstract.
19. Mark Van Doren, Liberal Education (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1943), p. 72.
20. Ibid., p. 81.
21. Mortimer Adler, “What is Liberal Education?” (http://www.realuofc.org/libed/adler/
wle.html) Adler noted that “nowadays, of course” to the seven traditional liberal arts “we
would add many more sciences, natural and social. This is just what has been done in the
various modern attempts to renew liberal education.”
22. Kass, Radical Conservatives, p.1, abstract.
23. For example, Allan Bloom’s call, made in his best-selling 1987 jeremiad The Closing of
the American Mind, for a return to the great books results in part from his experience in the
“Hutchins College” at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. His proposal was not part of
the movement, which had faded several decades earlier, but rather a call for a revival, in
part, of the philosophy of the movement.
24. Ernest L.Boyer and Arthur S.Levine, A Quest for Common Learning: The Aims of General
Education (Princeton: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1981),
pp. 2–3. Because the terms “general education” and “liberal education” were and are often
used synonymously, both in the past and in the current day, some further elaboration may
prove instructive. Boyer and Levine argue that general education is a twentieth-century
term for the first component of liberal education, under which may be included skills (the
“discipline” of the classical trivium) and knowledge (the “furniture” of the classical
quadrivium). It represents the interdependent “breadth” component of a liberal education.
The elective and specialized (major) parts of the curriculum are the second and third
independent components of a liberal education. Additionally, some suggest that the extra-
curriculum is a fourth component of a liberal education. Boyer and Levine thus suggest
that liberal education, at least as often understood at the end of the twentieth century,
consists of these three or four components and exists only when they are combined. While
this definition may be of current value, it is not applicable to the period of the liberal arts
movement. (See Boyer and Levine, A Quest for Common Learning, pp. 18, 32.)
25. Bell, The Reforming of General Education, p. 282.
26. lbid., p.152.
27. Christopher Lucas, American Higher Education: A History (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin,
1994), p.252.
28. Brubacher and Rudy, Higher Education in Transition, p.272.
29. Boyer and Levine, A Quest for Common Learning, p.15.
30. Ibid., p. 9.
31. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, p. 212.
Notes • 207
32. Edward J.Power, Educational Philosophy: A History from the Ancient World to Modern
America (New York: Garland, 1996), p. 26. Of Quintilian’s list, Power writes that: “Only
the best authors were on it, and those recognized for their transparency of expression were
preferred. Livy was better than Sallust; Cicero was in a class all by himself.”
33. Earlier great books lists had been assembled by Sir John Lubbock for the Workers’ and
Mechanics’ Institutes in England in the 1880s (Kass, Radical Conservatives, pp. 20–21)
and by Columbia English Literature professor George Edward Woodberry, who was Erskine’s
professor when Erskine was a graduate student at Columbia. (Chuncey G.Olinger, Jr., “The
Origins of the Honors Program at the University of Virginia,” uncompleted draft of remarks
prepared for the reunion of Honors in Philosophy alumni, the University of Virginia,
September 23–25, 1988, p. 2.)
34. Hutchins, Great Books, pp. 4–5.
35. Ibid.,p.20.
36. Robert M.Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1936, revised ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995), p. 78.
37. The history of the tutorial system at Oxford and Cambridge is long and multi-faceted.
Although no definitive history on the system exists, descriptions of it can be found in the
multi-volume set, The History of the University of Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.)
Alan Ryan, Warden of New College, Oxford, noted that the current form of the tutorial
came into view by the 1880s. In its current conception, all university students have a tutor
with whom they meet, often after dinner, in groups of two or three to present short papers
which are then critically discussed. Topics assigned (e.g., “discuss Kant’s Prolegomena”)
are usually quite broad. This differs from the form of tutorial common throughout the first
three-quarters of the nineteenth century when tutorials were more akin to recitations, i.e.,
to read a book and then recite passages back orally. (Author’s interview with Alan Ryan,
Warden, New College, Oxford, March 22, 2000, Charlottesville, VA.)
38. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, p. 10., courtesy
of Chauncey Olinger.
Chapter 1
1. Bruce Kimball, Orators & Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education (New
York: The College Board, 1995), p. 2.
2. Frederick Rudolph, Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study
Since 1636 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977), p. 10.
3. The term “trivium,” referring to the three language arts, was first used during the Carolingian
Renaissance among the English scholar Alcuin’s (730–804) circle of scholars at
Charlemagne’s palace school in Aachen, of which Alcuin was the master. The term
“quadrivium” was first coined by Boethius (480–524), a minister to the Ostrogoth king in
Italy, to refer to the four mathematical disciplines. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, pp.
47–51. As the seven artes liberales, these terms do not necessarily have the same meanings
as current parlance would suggest. The Trivium consists of: 1. Grammar: the art and science
of concrete things as they are used in the mediums of expression; 2. Rhetoric: the art and
science of applying such notations to things both concrete and abstract for practical and
theoretical ends; and, 3. Logic: the art and science of discovering and applying abstract
forms. The Quadrivium consists of: 1. and 2. Arithmetic and Geometry: the mathematical
arts and sciences that correspond to grammar in the Trivium; 3. Music: the art and science
that deals with applied mathematics in all the natural sciences; and, 4. Astronomy: the art
and science that deals with proportions, propositions, and proofs, including mathematical
logic. J. Winfree Smith, A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St. John’s
Program (Annapolis, MD: St. John’s College Press, 1983), p. 18.
4. Rudolph, Curriculum, pp. 30–31.
5. Julie Reuben, The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the
Marginalization of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 23.
6. Rudolph, Curriculum, p. 39.
7. Ibid., p. 14.
1994), pp. 109–110.
208 • Notes
10. The Yale Report of 1828, reprinted in the ASHE Reader on the History of Higher Education, eds.
Lester F.Goodchild and Harold S.Wechsler (Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press, 1989), p. 172.
11. Ibid., p. 173.
12. Lucas, American Higher Education, p. 134.
13. Reuben, Making of the Modern University, p. 25.
14. Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Princeton, 1746–1896 (Princeton, Princeton University
Press, 1946), p. 235.
15. Caroline Winterer, “The Humanist Revolution in America, 1820–1860: Classical Antiquity
in the Colleges,” History of Higher Education Annual 18 (1998): 111–129.
16. Ibid.
17. Christie Farnham, The Education of The Southern Belle: Higher Education and Student
Socialization in the Antebellum South (New York: New York University Press, 1994), pp.
16, 25–27, 38. Regional formulations of women’s education in the Antebellum era, including
the prevalence of collegiate education and the accepted societal roles for women, are a
matter of debate. In addition to Farnham, see Barbara Solomon, In the Company of Educated
Women: A History of Women and Higher Education in America (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1985), pp. 14–42.
18. john Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition: A History of American
Colleges and Universities, 4th ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997), p. 42.
19. Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York: A. Knopf,
1962; reprint, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990), p. 290.
20. Charles W.Eliot, quoted in Hugh Hawkins, Between Harvard and America: The Educational
Leadership of Charles W.Eliot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 92.
21. Ibid., p. 93.
22. Rudolph, American College and University, pp. 290–295. Eliot wrote that: “The elective system
is, in the first place, an outcome of the Protestant reformation. In the next place, it is an outcome
of political liberty.” (As quoted in Hawkins, Between Harvard and America, p. 94.)
23. See Wertenbaker, Princeton, pp. 304–307, and Hawkins, Between Harvard and America,
pp. 95–105, for more on the debate between McCosh and Eliot.
24. Laurence Veysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 55–56.
25. Lucas, American Higher Education, p. 170.
26. Eliot took exception to this convention too, arguing that in loco parentis was“an ancient
fiction which ought no longer to deceive anybody.” Charles Eliot, as quoted in Hawkins,
Between Harvard and America, p. 111.
27. George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to
Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 201.
28. James McCosh, as quoted in Marsden, Soul of the American University, p. 201.
29. Rudolph, American College and University, p. 460.
30. For a thorough examination of Washington, DuBois, and their philosophies of education,
see Louis R.Harlan, Booker T.Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1983), and David Levering Lewis, W.E. B.DuBois: Biography of
A Race, 1868–19/9 (NewYork: Henry Holt and Co., 1993).
31. See James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1988).
32. See Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women.
33. Lucas, American Higher Education, pp. 210–213.
34. Brubacher and Rudy, Higher Education in Transition, pp. 266–267.
35. Veysey, Emergence, p. 191; Lucas, American Higher Education, pp. 210–213.
36. For more on Lowell and how his views on liberal culture were manifest, see Marcia Graham
Synott The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900–
1970 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979); on West, see Wertenbaker, Princeton; and
on Woodberry, see Rudolph, Curriculum, p. 189.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., p. 240.
40. lbid., p. 189.
Notes • 209
41. Veysey noted that while many proponents of liberal culture used this phrase, others spoke
of “culture,” “general culture,” or of “liberal education.” (Veysey, Emergence, p. 180.)
42. Rudolph, American College and University, p. 454.
43. Ernest L.Boyer and Arthur Levine argued that there have been three general education
revivals during the twentieth century: one after World War I, a second after World War II,
and a contemporaneous one. (Ernest L.Boyer and Arthur Levine, A Quest for Common
Learning: The Aims of General Education, Princeton: The Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching, 1981.)
45. Boyer and Levine, A Quest for Common Learning, p. 15.
46. Ibid., p. 12.
48. Reuben, Making of the Modern University, p. 255.
49. Ibid., p. 7.
50. Ibid., pp. 264–265.
51. Ibid., pp. 268–269. As elaboration, Reuben writes: “Universities never renounced their traditional
moral aims. Educators continued to believe that universities should prepare their students to live
‘properly’ and contribute to the betterment of society. Contemporary interest in multicultural
education indicates that this is still an important imperative in universities today. But universities
no longer have a basis from which to judge moral claims. The Protestant synthesis that provided
moral guidance up until the late nineteenth century did not survive the adoption of modern standards
of scholarship or increased cultural diversity. Despite the hopes of its early advocates, scientific
inquiry never produced authoritative intellectual standards for determining what it means to live
‘properly’ or how to identify what constitutes social ‘betterment.’ Without a means of adjudicating
moral claims, contemporary debates about what college students should learn seem to be reduced
to ‘politics’” (p. 269). The dilemma Reuben describes is almost certainly aggravated by the
widespread adoption of a “postmodern” synthesis, particularly in the humanities, that, ironically,
had become the disciplinary refuge of moral reflection in the later twentieth century. This postmodern
synthesis denies the very legitimacy of a basis for the evaluation of moral claims. The result, of
course, is a potentially pernicious radical relativism that renders the still espoused moral aims of
the university not only impossible to achieve, but also illegitimate. While there are many books on
post-modernism, one view informed by the liberal arts movement is found in Rediscovering Values:
Coming to Terms with Postmodernism (Armonk, NY: M.E.Sharpe, 1997) by Hugh Mercer Curtler,
an alumnus of St. John’s College.
52. Justus Buchler, quoted in Daniel Bell, The Reforming of General Education (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 21.
54. Nine colleges were founded in English America before the Revolution: Harvard College,
1636; the College of William and Mary, 1693; the Collegiate School at New Haven, 1701,
renamed Yale College; the College of Philadelphia, 1740, renamed the University of
Pennsylvania; the College of New Jersey, 1746, renamed Princeton University; King’s
College, 1754, renamed Columbia University; the College of Rhode Island, 1764, renamed
Brown University; Queen’s College, 1766, renamed Rutgers College; and Dartmouth
College, 1769. (Lester Goodchild, “The History of American Higher Education: An Overview
and a Commentary,” in the ASHE Reader on The History of Higher Education, eds. Lester
F.Goodchild and Harold S.Wechsler [Needham Heights, MA: Ginn Press, 1989].)
55. John W.Burgess, quoted in Bell, The Reforming of General Education, p. 16.
56. As a guide, Erskine used the list drawn up by Sir John Lubbock for use in the Workers’ and
Mechanics’ Institutes in England in the 1880s. (Amy Apfel Kass, Radical Conservatives
for Liberal Education (Ph.D. Diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1973 [Ann Arbor: University
Microfilms, 1973], p. 20.) Erskine’s list included the following: Homer, Herodotus,
Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, selections from Greek Art,
Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Vergil, Horace, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, The
Song of Roland, TheNibelungenlied, St.Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes,
Milton, Molière, Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, Adam Smith, Kant,
Goethe, American State Papers (Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United
States, The Federalist Papers), Victor Hugo, Hegel, Sir Charles Lyell, Balzac, Thomas
210 • Notes
Malthus, Jeremy Bentham, Pasteur, Karl Marx, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, William
James, Galileo, Grotius, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes, John Stuart Mill, and Darwin.
(See Hugh Morehead, The History of the Great Books Movement, 2 vols. [unpublished
doctoral dissertation, Department of Education, University of Chicago, 1964], p. 690; and
Kass, Radical Conservatives, p. 21.)
57. Kass, Radical Conservatives, p. 19.
58. Bell, The Reforming of General Education, pp. 13–14.
59. Just as Mortimer Adler would take Erskine’s course as an undergraduate at Columbia, so
too would future fellow “liberal artist” Scott Buchanan be an undergraduate at Amherst
during Meiklejohn’s tenure. On another point, this interdisciplinary experience at Amherst,
and the success of “Contemporary Civilization” at Columbia, encouraged Meiklejohn to
establish an interdisciplinary two-year “experimental college” at the University of Wisconsin:
In the first year of its two-year program [Meiklejohn] proposed that students devote
the whole year to a study of an ancient civilization such as the Greek or the Roman.
To penetrate the spirit of such a culture as that of the Greeks it would be necessary
to come at it from all sides—its poetry, its drama, its philosophy, its politics, and
its economy—but none except in relation to all the rest. In the second year
Meiklejohn proposed taking up a modern, most likely American, civilization in
the same manner. The main aim would not be so much to gain information, although
that was important, as to develop a philosophical habit of mind in grasping the
over-all significance of the way the various parts of a culture interact. This
promising innovation lasted a few years and then folded its tent, not for want of
merit, but for want of students, who were actively discouraged from electing it by
a midwestern philistinism emanating not only from politicians but even faculty.
(Brubacher and Rudy, Higher Education in Transition, pp. 272–273.)
For more on the experimental college see Alexander Meiklejohn, The Experimental College
(New York: Harper & Row, 1932), and Freedom and the College (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice Hall, 1923).
60. Brubacher and Rudy, Higher Education in Transition, p. 272.
61. Kass, Radical Conservatives, p. 19, n. 22.
62. Mark Van Doren, The Autobiography of Mark Van Doren (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and
Co., 1958), p. 131.
64. The original Literature Humanities reading list for 1937–38 is as follows. Fall Semester:
Homer, Iliad; Herodotus, The Persian Wars; Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian
War; Aeschylus, Oresteia; Sophocles, Oedipus the King; Antigone; Euripides, Electra;
Iphigenia in Taurus; Aristophanes, The Frogs, Plutus; Plato, lon, Apology, Republic; Aristotle,
The Poetics, The Ethics; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things; Aurelius, Meditations; Virgil,
Aeneid, Augustine, Confessions. Spring Semester: Dante, Inferno; Machiavelli, The Prince;
Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel; Montaigne, Essays; Shakespeare, Henry IV, Parts 1
and 2; Cervantes, Don Quixote; Milton, Paradise Lost; Spinoza, Ethics; Molière, Tartuffe,
The Misanthrope, The Physician in Spite of Himself; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Fielding, Tom
Jones; Rousseau, Confessions; Voltaire, Candide; Goethe, Faust, Part 1. (David Denby, Great
Books [New York: Touchstone, 1996], pp. 465–466.)
65. Bell, The Reforming of General Education, pp. 21–22.
66. Boyer and Levine, A Quest for Common Learning, pp. 10–11.
67. In Higher Education in Transition, Brubacher and Rudy make a similar oversight to which,
as stated in the introduction, this study serves as a corrective. They state that “…the ‘Great
Books’ curriculum [was] spawned at Columbia, encouraged at Chicago, and actually put in
operation at St. John’s College in Annapolis.” (p. 274) Like Boyer and Levine, Brubacher
and Rudy missed the formative role of Virginia in the creating the great books curriculum.
69. Robert Streeter, One in Spirit: A Retrospective View of the University of Chicago on the
Occasion of its Centennial (Chicago: University of Chicago Publications Office, 1991), pp.
35–36. The “Latin issue” was a problem at the University from its inception. Upon reviewing
plans for the opening ceremonies in 1892, Geologist Thomas Chamberlin wrote to Harper:
In addition to the general objections, the singing of the Latin hymn is especially
distasteful to some of us, because of the regrettable attitude of some of the advocates
Notes • 211
of Latin toward the free development of the science courses. To some of us Latin
has come, as a result of this, to stand for much the same thing in the scholarly
world that Romanism does in the ecclesiastical world, and this is likely to grow in
intensity as long as the existing intolerant attitude is maintained and its ill effects
continue to be felt. The introduction, therefore, of a special feature that specifically
commemorates the attitude of the old scholasticism, from whose tyrannies we are
not yet escaped, is especially distasteful in a general assembly…. (p. 36.)
70. Ibid.,p.35.
71. Ibid., pp. 83–84.
72. These reforms were remarkably similar to the early practices at the University of Virginia
where “a student completed the course [of study] as fast, or as slowly, as he was able” and
where one could graduate only after passing general examinations. (Brubacher and Rudy,
Higher Education in Transition, p. 102 )
.
73. Harry S.Ashmore, Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins (Boston:
Little, Brown, and Co., 1989), p. 33.
74. Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1936; revised ed., New Brunswick: Transaction, 1995), p. 33.
75. Ashmore, Unseasonable Truths, p. 92.
76. William H.McNeill, Hutchins’ University: A Memoir of the University of Chicago, 1929–
1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 34.
77. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945),
p. 478.
78. Edward Peters, Europe and the Middle Ages (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1983),
p. 222.
79. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, pp. 461–462.
80. Peters, Europe and the Middle Ages, p. 221.
81. Ibid., p., 223.
82. Russell noted, for example, that there are five proofs given for the existence of God in the
Summa. One of them is the argument of the unmoved mover. Russell summarizes Aquinas’s
proof as follows: “There are things which are only moved, and other things which both
move and are moved. Whatever is moved is moved by something, and, since an endless
regress is impossible, we must arrive somewhere at something which moves without being
moved. This unmoved mover is God.” (Russell, History of Western Philosophy, p. 455.)
83. Russell, History of Western Philosophy, p. 452.
84. McNeill, Hutchins’ University, p. 37.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid.,p.36.
88. Ibid., p. 93.
89. Ibid., p. 98.
90. Rockefeller’s original intention was to ensure a Baptist educational presence in the burgeoning
city of Chicago. When the original University of Chicago, established in 1856 on property
donated by Stephen A.Douglas from his South Side estate “Oakenwald” went bankrupt in
1886, Chicago was left without a Baptist college. This absence was highlighted by the existence
of Northwestern, which had been founded by the Methodists, and Lake Forest College, which
had been founded by the Presbyterians. (The University and the City: A Centennial View of
the University of Chicago (Chicago: The University of Chicago Library, 1992), pp. 2–3.)
91. Kass, Radical Conservatives, pp. 122–123. A similar course, with similar results, was later
instituted at the University of Chicago School of Law.
92. Hutchins, Higher Learning, p. 79.
93. One can derive a sense of what the course might have been like, at least in terms of content,
by perusing, if not actually undertaking, the Reading Plan presented in: Mortimer Adler
and Peter Wolff, A General Introduction to the Great Books and to a Liberal Education
(Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1959). After a preface by Robert Hutchins, the
book contains information on fifteen selected readings, guides to the readings, and selftesting
questions.
94. Author’s interview with Sidney Hyman, Senior Fellow, Great Books Foundation, August
24, 2001, Chicago, IL.
212 • Notes
95. Mary Ann Dzuback, Robert M.Hutchins: Portrait of an Educator (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 101–104.
96. Streeter, One in Spirit, p. 97.
97. The course grew rather famous. Outside observers such as Orson Wells, Lillian Gish, and
Gertrude Stein came to the Midway to see the course in action. Details can be found in
Morehead, The History of the Great Books Movement.
Chapter 2
1. Thomas Jefferson, “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge [1779],” in John S.
Patton, Jefferson, Cabell and the University of Virginia, (New York: Neale Publishing Co.,
1906), p. 13. At the time, even public education was a radical notion, not to mention
electivism. Patton writes that: “The planter who had Madeira in his cellar almost certainly
had a tutor in his library for the intellectual behoof of his children; or he sent his sons to
Princeton or to the universities of the mother country. The offspring of less fortunate folk
grew up in an atmosphere in which Madeira, the clergy, and the pedagogue were little
known.” (p. 9.)
2. Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestly [18 January 1800], in Patton, Jefferson, Cabell and the
University of Virginia, p. 16.
3. For analysis of Jefferson’s designs, the subsequent reality of student life, and their relation
to notions of “aristocracy” at the University during the antebellum period see Jennings L.
Wagoner, Jr., “Honor and Dishonor at Mr. Jefferson’s University: The Antebellum Years,”
History of Education Quarterly, vol. 26,1986, pp. 155–179.
4. Thomas Jefferson to George Ticknor [16 July 1823], in Philip Alexander Bruce, History of the
University of Virginia, 1819–1919 (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1920), Vol l., pp. 331–332.
5. John S.Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition: A History of American
Colleges and Universities, 4th ed. (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1997), p. 462, n. 6.
6. Ibid., p. 101.
7. Ibid., p. 462, n. 6.
8. Bruce, History, Vol I., p. 332. Bruce wrote that “The adoption of the degrees of master of
arts and bachelor of arts was not in harmony with the principle upon which his [Jefferson’s]
university was built, in its theory at least, and was a distinctly regrettable, though perhaps,
for practical reasons, an unavoidable departure from its fundamental character.”
9. See Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York: A. Knopf,
1962; reprint, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990), pp. 124–128 (page citation is to
the reprint edition), and Hugh Hawkins, Between Harvard and America: The Educational
Leadership of Charles W.Eliot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 82.
10. Bruce, History, Vol I., p. 331. Bruce adds that “Rogers had been an instructor in that college
at one time and could, therefore, write authoritatively on this subject.”
11. Ibid., pp. 322–323.
12. Thomas Jefferson to W.B.Giles, December 1825, quoted in Bruce, History, Vol. I., p. 334.
13. Henry Shepherd quoted in Lawrence Levine, The Opening of the American Mind: Canons,
Culture, and History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), p. 77.
14. Joseph A.Soares, The Decline of Privilege: The Modernization of Oxford University
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 16. Soares also noted that:
Oxford from the turn of the century to the interwar period was a loose federation
of colleges where scions of the upper classes, with public school backgrounds,
pursued gentlemanly studies in the humanities when they were not playing cricket
or boating. It would be safe to assume that more dons knew about Aristotle’s
ethics than about James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory of light. (p. 267.)
15. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, p. 8., courtesy
of Chauncey Olinger; and Robert Gooch, transcript of interview with Robert Light,
Charlottesville, VA., March 15, 1973. RG 26/13, Folder: Gooch, Robert Kent, p. 1 ff. Virginia
Oral History Project, Special Collections, Alderman Library, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville,VA.
16. Virginius Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University: A History (Charlottesville: University of
Virginia Press, 1981), p. 454.
Notes • 213
17. Buchanan’s time at the People’s Institute, an outgrowth of Cooper Union, is well documented
in Mortimer J.Adler, Philosopher at Large: An Intellectual Autobiography (New York:
Macmillan, 1977) and Amy Apfel Kass, Radical Conservatives for Liberal Education, (Ph.D.
diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1973 [Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1973]). A brief
account by Buchanan himself can be found in the eighteen-page “New Introduction” to the
1962 Lippincott reprint of Buchanan’s 1929 Poetry and Mathematics. Buchanan wrote
that:
The occasion of a new edition of this particular book offers an opportunity for the
writer to say in a new introduction how the idea of it originally occurred and what
some of its consequences have been. After the book was written the idea was
recognized by one of the more learned readers [Richard McKeon] to be the idea
of the seven liberal arts. The consequences have been a radical reform of teaching
and learning in a small province of the modern academy.
(Scott Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics, [John Day Co., 1929; reprint, Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott Co., 1962], pp. 11 Iff.)
18. Since its founding by Charles Sprague Smith, a professor of comparative literature at
Columbia University, the People’s Institute had, as Buchanan put it,
had a rather remarkable career in American popular education. As the earlier
Lyceum and Chautauqua had brought itinerant scientific and literary teachers to
urban and rural centers of population, so the People’s Institute had brought in
people from distant places and traditions to hear lectures twice a week on literature,
politics, economics, and society in a free open assembly. From the start there had
been questions and discussion from the floor following each lecture, and these
exercises had brought sharp and sometimes learned criticism and dialectic to bear
upon the lectures….
(Scott Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics, [John Day Co., 1929; reprint, Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott Co., 1962], p. 11.)
19. Scott Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics (John Day Co., 1929; reprint, Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott Co., 1962), pp. 11ff. Iff.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid. In the 1970s Stringfellow Barr noted that “theology, law, and medicine were, from
[Buchanan’s] point of view, a very peculiar triad. They were your relation to God, your
relation to your neighbor, and your relation to the material environment,” respectively.
(Stringfellow Barr, Transcript of interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, p. 4. Courtesy
of Chauncey Olinger.)
23. Ibid.
24. Charles A.Nelson, Scott Buchanan: A Centennial Appreciation of His Life and Work: 1895–
1968 (Annapolis: St. JohnVs College Press, 1995), p.v.Buchanan’s first three courses at
Virginia as an associate professor were: “Philosophical Criticism: A study of problems
arising from the interactions and conflicts of scientific, aesthetic, and moral interests”;
“The Platonic Tradition in Philosophy: A study of the intellectual crises in history when
Platonism has been a deciding factor; the rise of Christian theology; the beginning of modern
science; recent developments in mathematics and physics”; and “Aesthetics: A critique of
art and art criticism.” (University of Virginia Record, Catalogue Number 1929–1930,
Announcements 1930–1931, p. 233.)
25. J.Winfree Smith, A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St. John’s Program
(Annapolis, MD: St. John’s College Press, 1983), p. 131, n. 12. “Barr received the nickname,
‘Winkie,’ when he was a very small boy because of his fascination with a nursery rhyme
that used to be repeated to him by his maternal grandfather, the Reverend Frank Stringfellow,
an Episcopal priest, who, as a scout for General Robert E.Lee during the Civil War, had had
many extraordinary adventures. The rhyme went:
Hokey, pokey, winkie, wunk
Chubberly, cummery, chummerly, chunk.
Hangery, wangery, chingery, changery,
King of the Cannibal Islands.”
26. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, p. 110.
Incidentally, Barr’s father, William Alexander Barr, “who had the reputation of being an
214 • Notes
eloquent man in the pulpit,” gave the sermon at the exercises held for the University of
Virginia’s Centennial Celebration in 1919 (pp. 113, 118).
27. At the time of World War I, the requirements for the B.A. degree at Virginia were as follows:
Group Electives:
I. Languages, 18 Semester Hours. (Two required, but 12 hours must be in Latin or
Greek)
II. Mathematical Sciences, 12 Semester Hours. (Math and Astronomy included, but
6 hours must be in Math)
III. Natural Sciences, 24 Semester Hours. (Two Sciences must be offered)
IV. Social Sciences, 12 Semester Hours. (History, Economics, and Government
included)
V. English, 12 Semester Hours. (Biblical Literature and Public Speaking included
but 6 hours must be in English)
To these 96 semester hours were added 30 semester hours in electives-at-large (free electives),
of which 18 hours must be in one of the above groups. Additionally, of these 18 hours, one
“C” course (100 to 199 level) must be included. Of the electives-at-large, 6 hours may also be
in physical education. Total required semester hours for the B.A. is 126. Students pursuing
the B.S. were permitted substitution of a foreign language for the compulsory Latin or Greek
of the B.A. Program.
(Bulletin of the Liberal Arts Committee, Vol. I., No. 1., 15 April 1947, RG 19/2/6.781, Special
Collections, University of Virginia.)
28. After a year at Tulane University, Barr took the following courses (with grades) for his
bachelor’s degree:
1913–14: Latin A1, 79, Mathematics B1, 79, Greek A2, 75, Eng. Literature B2, 81, Philosophy
B1, 81; 1914–15: Latin B2, 75, Greek B1, 79, Zoology B1, 87, Philosophy B3, 86, English
C1, 88; 1915–16: Geology B1, 93, English B1, 93, English B2, 97, Pol. Science B1, 90,
Economics B1, 88.
For his master’s degree, Barr took the following courses: 1916–17: Philosophy C1, satisfactory,
Eng. Literature C1, 90, Economics C1, 82, English D2, 95.
(University of Virginia transcript, Series 2, Box 14, Folder 22. Stringfellow Barr Papers,
Greenfield Library, St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD.)
29. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Francis Mason, June 29, 1975, p. 60.
Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
30. Transcript Authentication and Raven Society Certificate, Series 2, Box 14, Folders 20, 11.
Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College. The Raven Society is
the University of Virginia’s oldest honor society.
31. Barr, transcript of interview with Francis Mason, June 29, 1975, p. 63.
32. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to President E.A.Alderman, February 26,1924, Series 2, Box
29, Folder 57. Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
33. Barr, transcript of interview with Francis Mason, June 29, 1975, p. 61. Barr’s first courses
as an assistant professor were: “History B1: General History, Ancient and Medieval” and
“History B2: Modern European History.” (University of Virginia Record, Catalogue Number
1924–1925, Announcements 1925–1926, p. 158.)
34. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Charles and Mary Wiseman, July 6, 1975, p.
37. Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
35. Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, p. 100; and, Encyclopedia
Americana, International Edition, 1996, Vol. 3, p. 264, and, Britannica Perspectives, Vol. 1
,
1968, p. 62; Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
36. Charles A.Nelson, Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of His Life and Work:
1897–1982 (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1997), p. 1.
37. Author’s interview with Charles E.Moran, University Historian Emeritus, University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, June 3, 1999.
38. Author’s interview with Samuel A. (Pete) Anderson, II, Architect for the University,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, May 12,1999.
39. Author’s interview with Charles E. Moran, Charlottesville, VA, June 3, 1999.
40. Author’s interview with Staige D.Blackford, Editor, Virginia Quarterly Review, University
of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, June 7, 1999.
41. Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, p. 579.
Notes • 215
42. J.Winfree Smith as quoted in Nelson, Scott Buchanan, p. 66.

43. Author’s interview with L.Harvey Poe, Jr., St. John’s College Tutor Emeritus, Washington
D.C., April 19, 2000. Buchanan’s Metaphysics course was described in the Virginia Record
as: “A study of the elements of the speculative science of metaphysics and special
consideration of the bases and scopes of the rational and empirical sciences and of the
doctrinal positions of Aristotle, Spinoza, and Bradley.” Buchanan also led reading courses
on Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. (University of Virginia Record, Catalogue Number 1934–
1935, Announcements 1935–1936, p. 242.)
44. Clipping from College Topics, May 12,1922, in the Robert Gooch Papers, RG 21/60.821,
Box 11, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
45. The new requirements for the B.A. degree adopted in 1922 were as follows: Required
Subjects:
I. Foreign Languages, 18 Semester Hours. (Two required, but 12 hours must be in
Latin or Greek)
II. Mathematics, 6 Semester Hours.
III. Natural Sciences, 12 Semester Hours.
IV. English, 12 Semester Hours. (Biblical Literature and Public Speaking included,
but 6 hours must be in English)
V. Social Sciences, 6 Semester Hours. (History, Economics, and Government
included)
VI. Philosophy, 6 Semester Hours. (Logic, Ethics, and Psychology included)
VII. Physical Education, 6 Semester Hours.
To these 66 semester hours were added 24 hours of Major Electives which must be taken
from one of the following groups:
I. Language, Literature, Fine Arts, and Music
II. Social and Philosophical Sciences
III. Mathematical and Natural Sciences
One “C” course must be included. Additionally, 36 electives-at-large were required, for a
grand total of 126 semester hours for the B.A. degree. Between 1922 and 1936 the requirement
in Social Science was increased to 12 semester hours. Sociology was added to the Social
Science group and 6 semester hours in history were required. The History of Philosophy
replaced Logic and Ethics in the Philosophy group.
(Bulletin of the Liberal Arts Committee,Vol. I., No. 1., April 15, 1947, RG 19/2/6.78l, Spe-
cial Collections, University of Virginia)
46. Robert Gooch as quoted in Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, p. 579.
47. Author’s interview with Charles E.Moran, Charlottesville, VA, June 3, 1999.
48. The 1933 yearbook, Corks and Curls, lists four recipients of the Bachelors of Science with
Final Honors and three recipients of the Bachelors of Arts with Final Honors. (Corks and
Curls, 1933, p. 94. Alderman Library, University of Virginia.) The Final Honors system
eventually received greater elaboration. The 1933 Record, for example, stated that:
Final honors are conferred on the basis of a final comprehensive examination, both
oral and written, on some field of knowledge, and not for the work done in any or all
of the regular courses required for a baccalaureate degree. Honors work involves
wide and independent reading for two years, under the general direction of the
professors of an academic school. It does not require regular attendance upon lectures
or the passing of any tests or examinations, except the final examination, though
consultations and reports may be required. Its aim is the development of a capacity
for scholarly work in a field of knowledge, rather than a mastery of required details
of subject matter. (“Degrees With Honors,” University of Virginia Record, Catalogue
1932–1933, Announcements 1933–1934, pp. 264–65.)
49. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Francis Mason and Allan Hoffman, October
5, 1975, pp. 48–49. Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College. Of
Spengler’s deterministic view of history, Barr later stated: “It’s hazardous stuff. I mean,
intellectually, very hazardous stuff when you start mucking the cycles and start showing
the wheel of history. It’s so easily made a cult, I think…. They say now this is coming for
the following reasons.”
50. Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics, p. 22.
216 • Notes
Barbara: The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1969), p. 86.
52. Author’s interview with L.Harvey Poe, Jr., Washington D.C., April 19,2000. Poe later served
as a tenured tutor and Assistant Dean at St. John’s College. More on Poe’s experiences
with Barr and Buchanan can be found in Nelson, Stringfellow Barr, pp. 170–172. Although
Barr would leave the University of Virginia for the University of Chicago in the summer of
1936, it is clear that his teaching style and content were changing by that time. In addition
to his survey course, Barr was also going to teach a course on “Greek and Roman Historians”
and another course on the “Civilization of the Greeks and Romans.” (University of Virginia
Record, Catalogue Number 1935–1936, Announcements 1936–1937, p. 241.)
53. Stringfellow Barr, Transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, July 13, 1975, p. 6.
Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College. The honors program to
which Barr was referring was the University’s “Special Honors” program.
54. Letter from John L.Newcomb to Robert K.Gooch, September 15, 1934. RG 2/1/2.491 II,
Box 13, Folder: 1934–36 Honors Courses—Reports of Committee. Special Collections,
55. Letter from Otis Peabody Smith, Life Magazine, to President John Newcomb, June 2, 1937.
RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 2, Folder “1937–38: General Records, Articles on UVa, President’s
Office.” Special Collections, University of Virginia.
56. Life Magazine, June 7, 1937. RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 2, Folder “1937–38: General Records,
Articles on UVa, President’s Office.” Special Collections, University of Virginia.N.B.
“F.F.V.” means “First Families of Virginia.” President Newcomb had been sent an advance
copy of the text of the Life article for his perusal. In a telegram to Henry Luce, the Editor of
Life, Newcomb replied that:
I have just seen an advance copy of your caption to the pictures of the University
of Virginia which will appear in the next issue of Life. I most emphatically protest
against erroneous statements reflecting upon the University’s standing as an
institution of higher education. The obvious injustice that your article will do to
our educational standards and to the habits of our students will be realized by all
who know the University but others may be grossly misled by the inaccuracies
contained therein. I am sure you do not desire to be unjust to us and I sincerely
hope that there is yet time for you to correct the errors in your captions.
A telegraph reply from a Daniel Longwell at Life dated June 3, 1937 reads: “I am sorry but
Life’s color section is already printed. But Life’s editors will be glad to have you expand your
protest into specific corrections that we can print in our letters to the editors column.”
57. Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, pp. 153–154.
58. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, such concerns also motivated the election of Colgate
Darden as Newcomb’s successor in 1946.
59. Stringfellow Barr, “Jefferson’s University,” The Commonwealth, The Magazine of Virginia Business,
February 1935. Stringfellow Barr Papers, 2/1/10, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
60. Frank Aydellotte, Breaking the Academic Lockstep: The Development of Honors Work in
American Colleges and Universities (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), p. 91.
61. The new curriculum, replacing the one that had been in effect since 1922, was as follows:
Required Courses:
I. English, 6 Semester Hours.
II. Foreign Languages, 12–24 Semester Hours.* (Second-year college course in each
of two languages, one of which must be Greek or Latin)
III. Mathematics, 6 Semester Hours.
IV. Natural Science, 12 Semester Hours.
V. Physical Education, 0 Semester Hours (2 years required)
To these 36 to 48 semester hours of required courses are added 30 to 42 required hours in a
field of concentration, of which 18–30 are in the major and 12–24 are in related subjects. Free
electives are to complete a total of 120 semester hours for the B.A. degree. Additionally, one
must pass a final comprehensive examination.
* Between 1936 and the beginning of World War II, the requirement of Greek or Latin was
dropped, and it became permissible to substitute a third-year course in one foreign language
for a second-year course in each of two.
Notes • 217
(The Bulletin of the Liberal Arts Committee, Vol. I, No. I, April 15, 1947. RG 19/2/6.781
Folder: “Bulletin of the Liberal Arts Committee, 4/15/47–9/18/50.” Special Collections,
University of Virginia.)
These changes were designed to improve the education of all students. The Dean of the
College, George Ferguson, explained the rationale behind the new arrangement by noting:
It is hoped that the new requirements will insure a reasonably thorough mastery
of at least one important field of knowledge, that they will bring about an
acquaintance with the traditional liberal arts and sciences and that they will allow
a proper measure of freedom in the pursuit of individual interests. It is also hoped
that they will tend to de-emphasize the idea that a degree is made up of an
accumulation of fragmentary and quickly forgotten credit-hours, and will encourage
a more comprehensive and permanent mastery of subjects as wholes.
(George Ferguson, “New Degree Requirements At The University of Virginia” 10 August
1935, RG 20/29, Box 11, Special Collections, University of Virginia. Additional commentary
can be found in Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, p. 169.)
63. J.L.Brierly and H.V.Hodson, “Literae Humaniores,” in the Handbook to the University of
Oxford, 1962 (London, Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 149–150, as quoted in Daniel
Bell, The Reforming of General Education (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966),
p. 286. Bell added the following footnote:
In effect, “Greats” is a combined school of classical history and philosophy. A
knowledge of both Greek and Latin is required and the First Public Examination,
at the end of the second year, includes translation from Latin and Greek into
English and the rendering of passages of English prose (verse is optional) into
Latin or Greek in the style of the classical authors or orators. The school covers
three centuries of Greek history and a somewhat longer period of Roman history,
ending with the death of the Emperor Trajan in 117 A.D. The study of philosophy
is based on Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Ethics, to which is added modern
philosophy from Descartes.
One always risks claiming too much for a single educational program as the
formative reason for an intellectual elite. A simple sociological point must be
remembered: that the better students take “Greats.” As Mr. Brierly and Mr. Hodson
write: “Much of the deserved fame of Literae Humaniores at Oxford is due to the
fact that for over a century a veritable elite from the best schools in England has
prepared itself for classical scholarship and proceeded to Oxford after intensive
competitive examination. The students and teachers in this Honour School of
Literae Humaniores have been, and probably still remain, the most naturally gifted
and the most severely disciplined elements in the University, and to a greater or
lesser degree the rest of us are a little bit afraid of them. It is probably true to say
that no single definite curriculum of study in any one university in modern times
has produced so many famous men in public life, in learning and letters.”
This adulation notwithstanding, there were those who thought “Greats” could be improved.
In an article draft written in the 1960s, Barr noted that the great medical scholar Sir William
Osler, the president of the British Classical Association, delivered an address in which he
“lamented that the Oxford School of Literae Humaniores, commonly referred to as ‘Greats,’
should not include in the ‘humanities’ such [mathematical and scientific] works as those of
Hippocrates and Galen, of Theophrastus, of Archimedes, of Aristarchus.” Given the curriculum
they helped formulate in the Virginia Plan, Barr and Buchanan would no doubt have agreed
with Osler. (Barr, handwritten draft of article for The Center Magazine, 8053h, Box 4,
Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.)
64. Aydelotte, Breaking the Academic Lockstep, pp. 23–24.
65. Aydelotte noted, for example, that: “The final examinations for the degree in Literae
Humaniores include the great periods of ancient history and philosophy with appropriate
modern comment…. The requirement for success is twofold: exact knowledge of certain
set books and topics, coupled with capacity to deal in broad generalities with a wide range
of historical and literary material.” (Aydelotte, Breaking the Academic Lockstep, p. 23.)
66. Adler, Philosopher at Large, p. 87. Actually, it appears that the “Greats” courses were more
elite than Adler gave credit. Joseph Soares noted that: “Dons directed their most brilliant
218 • Notes
undergraduates toward literae humaniores as the best place to receive an education suitable
for politics and administration on the world stage.” (Soares, The Decline of Privilege, p. 36.)
67. Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics, pp. 22–23.
68. In spite of their friendship, Barr wrote that he did not solicit Buchanan’s appointment at
the University of Virginia in 1929. The chairman of the philosophy department, Albert
Balz, knowing that Barr knew Buchanan, asked Barr for his thoughts. Barr replied:
…I said to Balz, this man who was inquiring of me, “He is quite difficult. I think
he’s worth it but a lot of people wouldn’t.” But I don’t think that anybody with
any intelligence and certainly not Scott, would want me to say, “oh, he’s just a
peach of a guy.” Because I knew he’d make life kind of hellish for all of ’em—
fruitfully, I would predict. Well, when he came, they—I think it was not only that
by now they were convinced he had a mind, but that he also had a kind of charm—
until the blow fell—that is, until he started asking really embarrassing Socratic
questions. So they took him on and were apparently damned glad of it.
(Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Charles and Mary Wiseman, July 6, 1975,
Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College.)
69. Wofford, Embers of the World, pp. 89–90.
70. In writing an article on Buchanan in 1968, Barr recorded that, more than twenty years after
Buchanan had left Virginia, “…a young Californian, who was about to move to Virginia,
asked Buchanan how to behave. ‘Always remember you are in a foreign country,’ he said.
It was what Buchanan himself had done for seven years.” (Stringfellow Barr, handwritten
draft of article for The Center Magazine, 8053h, Box 4, Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special
71. Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics, pp. 23–24. The “ad hoc Honors Course” to which
Buchanan referred was the University’s Special Honors program established in 1924. It is
necessary to make an important point of clarification about a chronological problem in some
of Buchanan’s recollections. President Alderman died in April of 1931 and subsequently
John Lloyd Newcomb was named Acting President. After more than two years of this
arrangement, Newcomb officially became President on October 6, 1933. In spite of Buchanan’s
recollections to the contrary, it appears that, at most, Alderman only prompted formal review
of the regular college curriculum, which as noted earlier in this chapter, was eventually revised
in 1935. The review of honors work at the university may well have been discussed by
Alderman, but as will be seen, it was Newcomb who, in September 1934, commenced the
formal committee review of honors work that resulted in the Virginia Plan.
72. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Mortimer Adler, October 17, 1929, as quoted in Smith,
Search for a Liberal College, p. 13.
73. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Robert Hutchins, February 21, 1930, R.M.Hutchins Papers
Addenda, 19/3. Special Collections, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
74. Ibid.
75. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Robert Hutchins, March 22, 1930, R.M.Hutchins Papers
Addenda, 19/3, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
77. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Robert Hutchins, March 22, 1930, R.M.Hutchins Papers
Addenda, 19/3, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
78. Ibid. In accepting a later invitation to spend Thanksgiving in Charlottesville with the
Buchanans, Hutchins wrote: “Please make no arrangements beyond Barr in both spellings.”
(Letter from Hutchins to Buchanan, November 19, 1932, Hutchins Papers Addenda, Box
19, Folder 2, Special Collections, University of Chicago.)
79. Smith, Search for a Liberal College, p. 13.
80. Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics, p. 12
81. Buchanan to Adler, Adler Files, as quoted . in Smith, Search for a Liberal College, p. 15.
82. Adler, Philosopher at Large, p. 116. Adler noted that: “In the early thirties, Scott Buchanan
organized a series of theology lectures at the University of Virginia. When he invited me to give
a number of them on especially difficult topics, such as the angelic hierarchy, or the resurrection
of the body at the end of the world, I studied parts of the Summa that I might never have
ventured into in pursuit of philosophical truth.” (Adler, Philosopher at Large, p. 305.)
83. Ibid., p. 140. Mark Van Doren and Richard McKeon came out from Columbia University
the following year to perform the same role.
Notes • 219

85. Barr, draft for The Center Magazine, Barr also noted that throughout this time Buchanan
remained “thoroughly Oxonian. He never bustled or engaged in busy-work. Since he never
stopped thinking, even while jesting, he lacked the average academic’s motive for convincing
himself that he is not idling.”
86. Many years later Barr recalled this period:
…when Alderman died, the Richmond Times Richmond Times Dispatch, I guess,
came out and said the two most likely successors were John Lloyd Newcomb and
Stringfellow Barr. Well, I was only…about thirty, I guess…thirty-two, I
suppose…and never…and not hungry for that job. But I was of course terribly
flattered….
…Newcomb succeeded him. And…. Newk was a nice guy, but he hadn’t the
slightest idea what it was all about. He was…even though he was Dean of
Engineering…a very practical guy. But he had no liberal education that I know
about really. And I was devoted to him, but I thought it was kind of an awful
choice, but I don’t know who the hell they could have gotten, really. Thank God I
wasn’t asked, because I probably would have found it difficult to decline, because
of my feverish affection for the institution.
(Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Douglas Tanner, Kingston, N.J., September
12, 1972, p. 18. Accession no. RG 26/11, Folder: Barr, F.Stringfellow, Oral History, Special
Collections. University of Virginia.)
87. Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, pp. 136–140. Newcomb was well regarded by the
university community. In 1933 Newcomb became the first faculty member ever to receive
the prestigious Raven Award from the Raven Society.
88. Letter from Buchanan to Adler, March 1934, as quoted in Smith, Search for a Liberal
College, p.15.
89. Ibid.
90. Barr, transcript of interview with Douglas Tanner, September 12, 1972, p. 18. Barr also
remarked that “I think Bob [Gooch] probably chose the committee members.” (Stringfellow
Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, August 3, 1975, p. 42. Stringfellow Barr
Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College.)
91. Barr noted that: “…Bob Gooch, who was a former Rhodes Scholar and knew Scott
[Buchanan]—never understood him very well but knew him and had known me when we
were undergraduates—recognized that the elective system was pretty sick, there as elsewhere,
and that there ought to be some kind of honors work—there ought to be something that every
student didn’t have to do but that was more worth doing than what the others did.” (Stringfellow
Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, August 3, 1975, p. 42.)
92. Letter from John Newcomb to Robert Gooch, September 15, 1934, RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box
13, Folder: 1934–36: Honors Courses—Reports of Committee. Special Collections,
93. Handwritten note from Robert Gooch to John Newcomb, September 18, 1934, RG 2/1/
2.491 II, Box 13, Folder: 1934–36: Honors Courses—Reports of Committee. Special
Collections, University of Virginia. In addition to Barr, Buchanan, and Gooch, the other
committee members were chemistry professor Arthur F. Benton, mathematics professor
John Jennings Luck, and Dean of the College George O.Ferguson, ex officio.
94. Barr, transcript of interview with Tanner, September 12, 1972, pp. 18–19.
95. Scott Buchanan, “A Scheme for a Course in General Honors,” RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 13,
Special Collections, University of Virginia.
96. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Francis Mason and Allan Hoffman, October 5,
1975, p. 53. That Barr would have thought Gooch’s political sensitivities “unfortunate” is
corroborated by student recollections of them. Samuel (Pete) Anderson recalled that: “Barr
played the role of dissident—a free thinking liberal; Gooch was much more buttoned-up.”
Author’s interview with Samuel A.(Pete) Anderson, II, May 12, 1999, Charlottesville, VA.
5, 1975, p. 53.
98. Robert Gooch, “Final Honors,” handwritten statement, n.d. [1934–1935]. RG 2/1/2.491 II,
Box 13, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
220 • Notes
99. Smith, Search for the Liberal College, p. 17. Barr recollected further: “…I think Bob [Gooch]
would have settled gladly for a transplant of Oxford. That is, trying to do some reading and
some decent writing. And I think Bob rather quailed before Scott’s Chicago-New York-
Columbia-Adlerian stuff. And then he saw that I was interested and I think he himself got
a little interested. But he, I’m sure, for his money what happened fruitfully was that some
provisions were made for honors work in a field, in history or whatever you were “reading,”
as Oxford would put it. Bobby fell for Oxford very hard and it was probably almost snobbery,
it seems to me, and I was fond of him but in this area he was limited—he had a very
workable, good mind—but I don’t think he ever got Scott’s point.” (Stringfellow Barr,
transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, August 3, 1975, p. 43.)
100. Barr, transcript of interview with Tanner, September 12, 1972, p. 21.
101. In his 1983 history, A Search for the Liberal College, University of Virginia graduate and
St. John’s tutor J.Winfree Smith argues that:
When one considers that [Buchanan’s plan] was to read in two years almost as
many books as St. John’s undergraduates now read in four years, and to read in
their entirety books many of which are now read at St. John’s only in part, and
that the list contained Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, Part I, Newton’s
Principia, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel’s Phenomenology, Maxwell’s
Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, etc., one sees the impossibility of the task.
But the plan had not been put to the severe test of practice as it was to be later at
St. John’s. (Smith, Search for the Liberal College, p. 17.)
102. Scott Buchanan, “Supplement to A Scheme For A Course in General Honors,” RG 2/1 /
2.491 II, Box 13, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
5, 1975, p. 53. Based on her interview with Barr in November, 1970, in Kingston, New
Jersey, Amy Kass wrote the following:
At first, Stringfellow Barr was a severe critic of Buchanan’s proposal…. Buchanan
suggested a curriculum based on the great books and the liberal arts. Barr viewed this
emphasis as some kind of patent medicine. However, after a great deal of teasing from
Buchanan, he began making the collateral reading for his history courses some of the
classics in the field. “For instance, if they were doing undergraduate ancient history, I
would let them read Plutarch instead of something somebody had written about ancient
Greece,” Barr later recalled,“and I noticed Scott was right—that if you had discussions
on the basis of Plutarch or Herodotus or Thucydides, something happened to the
discussion that I had never seen before. These authors got under their hides.” …As a
result of this experience, Barr supported Buchanan’s proposal and later joined Buchanan
at the University of Chicago. (Amy Apfel Kass, Radical Conservatives for Liberal
Education, unpublished Ph.D. Diss. Johns Hopkins University, 1973, p. 130, n. 33.)
104. “Committee on Honors Courses: Tentative Suggestions to Serve as a Possible Basis of
Discussion,” RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 13, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid.
107. Ibid.
108. Stringfellow Barr, “Tentative Protocol Submitted to the Higher Contracting Powers,” RG
2/1/2.491 II, Box 13, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
109. Ibid.
110. Ibid.
111. Barr, transcript of interview with Tanner, September 12, 1972, pp. 18–19. N.B. The monikers
“Virginia Report” and “Virginia Plan” were used interchangeably by its authors. They were
the same thing and in the interest of clarity this book uses exclusively the moniker “Virginia
Plan.” It is also important to note that, as will be explained, the Virginia Plan actually
proposed two complimentary plans or schemes to be used in tandem: one plan for
underclassmen and one plan for upperclassmen.
Chapter 3
1. Of the Virginia Plan great books scheme for the first two years, Barr later stated that: “It
was a rather important device, …this was the first adumbration; the second one was
[Buchanan’s] Supplement to the [1937 St. John’s] Bulletin, which was out before there
Notes • 221
were any people doing it…and then the full-blooded [1938 St. John’s] Catalog came out
when some were doing it.” (Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey
G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, p. 14. Courtesy of Chauncey Olinger.)
2. Stringfellow Barr, handwritten draft of article for The Center Magazine, p. 14,8053h, Box
4, Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, Alderman Library, University of Virginia,
3. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, pp. 10, 11.
4. “Report of the Committee on Honors Courses to the President of the University,” RG 2/1/
2.491 II, Box 13, Folder: Honors Courses, 1934–36, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
5. Stringfellow Barr, Transcript of interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, pp. 13–16.
6. Smith rightly argued that the Virginia Plan was “a combination of the views of Buchanan
and Gooch…” (J.Winfree Smith, A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St.
John’s Program [Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1983], p. 17.)
Lippincott Co., 1962), pp. 26–27.
8. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Douglas Tanner, Kingston, N.J., September
12, 1972, Accession no. RG 26/11, Folder: Barr, F.Stringfellow, p. 19. Virginia Oral History
Project, Special Collections, University of Virginia. When asked to compare undergraduate
education at Virginia and Oxford Barr replied:
…the easiest way to state it in the case of examinations was that in America we
examine the student to see if there’s something he doesn’t know, and at Oxford you
examine the student to find out if there’s anything he does know, and can state cogently
and interestingly and maturely. So they give you terribly wide leeway on choice of
subjects, because they’re not trying to find corners of ignorance, they’re trying to find
out, “Have you any intellectual life of your own…that you’re able to report on?” And
this seems to me to be a big gain. (Barr, transcript of interview with Tanner, p. 8).
9. It is telling that the copy of the Virginia Plan that Barr had with him at St. John’s, now in
the Maryland State Archives, contained the introduction and Appendix A (the great books
plan), but not Appendix B (the honors tutorial plan). (Stringfellow Barr Papers, deck 2,
range 72, section 9, box 41, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, MD.) At the same time,
as will be seen in the discussion of St. John’s in Chapter 4, there were elements of an
Oxford education which Barr believed were essential, and which he insisted be a part of
the St. John’s curriculum, such as the Don Rag.
10. Amy Apfel Kass, Radical Conservatives for Liberal Education,” (Ph.D. Diss., Johns Hopkins
University, 1973; [Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1973]), p. 1.
11. Ibid., p. 135.
12. Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics, pp. 26–27. Although Barr, Buchanan, Hutchins, and
Adler all came to believe that a liberal education was the best education for all college
students, the Virginia conception of specific work in the liberal arts was always of an elite
nature. A 1935 article written by Barr concurrent with the committee meetings that resulted
in the Virginia Plan conveyed this elite understanding.
…Mr. Jefferson has gone down in history as the great democrat; but every intelligent
reader of a good biography of this man will recognize in him, in his tastes, in his
restraints, in his sense of noblesse oblige, an aristocrat to the fingertips.
The fact is that Mr. Jefferson fought strenuously against special privilege, the
privilege of Hamilton’s “rich and well-born.” He fought for equality of opportunity.
But he did not fight—as modern “democrats” have too often fought—for mediocrity.
This will account for his own description of Jeffersonian democracy as an aristocracy
of virtue and talent. He wanted character and intelligence, not birth or wealth to be
the social differential. And he therefore explicitly planned a public school system
and a university whose special responsibility would be to develop, for the benefit of
the entire community, those potential leaders whose characters and talents seemed
most worthy of development. It is this sort of democracy that has given the University
of Virginia its curiously aristocratic tinge and it is this sort of democracy that attracts
to the University young men from many states.
(Stringfellow Barr, “Jefferson’s University,” The Commonwealth: The Magazine of Virginia
Business, February 1935. Stringfellow Barr Papers, Section 2, Box 1, Folder 10, Special
Collections, St. John’s College.)
222 • Notes
13. Virginius Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University: A History (Charlottesville: University of

Virginia Press, 1981), p. 170.
14. lbid., p. 171.
16. “A Scheme for A Course in General Honors,” RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 13, Special Collections,
17. Ibid
18. Ibid. “The Original Jeffersonian Curriculum” submitted by Buchanan and the other
committee members read as follows: “I. Languages (ancient): Latin, Greek, Hebrew; II.
Languages (modern): French, Spanish, Italian, German, Anglo-Saxon; III. Mathematics
(pure): Algebra, Fluxions, Geometry (elementary, transcendental), Architecture (military,
naval); IV. Physico-Mathematics: Mechanics, Statics, Dynamics, Pneumatics, Acoustics,
Optics, Astronomy, Geography; V. Physics or Natural Philosophy: Chemistry, Mineralogy;
VI. Botany, Zoology; VII. Anatomy, Medicine; VIII. Government: Political Economy, Law
of Nature, Law of Nations, History; IX. Law (municipal); X. Ideology: General Grammar,
Ethics, Rhetoric, Belles Lettres, and Fine Arts.”
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Scott Buchanan, “Supplement to A Scheme For A Course in General Honors,” RG 2/1/
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid.
26. Anonymous typewritten comments on the Committee on Honors’ Virginia Plan. RG 2/1/
2.491 II, Box 13, Special Collections, University of Virginia. As noted earlier, the committee
members were willing to dispense with the term “honors” and instead institute a “President’s
List” as a sort of honor roll.
27. Barr, transcript of interview with Tanner, September 12, 1972, pp. 23–24.
28. Anonymous typewritten comments on the Committee on Honors’ Virginia Plan. RG 2/1/
29. Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, p. 141.
30. “Annual Report of the Bursar,” University of Virginia Record, various years.
31. Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics, p. 27. Similar to the Buchanan recollection noted
earlier in this chapter, the chronological sequence in this account of events is impossible.
By the time that Newcomb appointed a Committee on Honors Courses—“the Gooch
Committee”—in September 1934, Newcomb had been the president, not the acting president,
for almost a year. When the committee presented the Virginia Plan to him in November
1935 he had been president for more than two years. The passage of almost thirty years
seems to have blurred Buchanan’s memory on some of these details, but chronology aside,
Buchanan’s other recollections square with other evidence. For example, Buchanan does
suggest that Newcomb did not want to overreach his relatively new authority by undertaking
such a radical departure from the status quo. This certainly agrees with Virginius Dabney’s
assessment of Newcomb that was discussed earlier in this chapter.
32. Barr, transcript of interview with Tanner, September 12, 1972, pp. 19–20. Just before the
start of the Depression, Philip Francis DuPont, who as a student had been dismissed in
1900 for “persistent neglect of duty,” bequeathed a trust fund of $6,000,000 to the university.
(Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, p. 84). Presumably Barr is referring to members of
Philip DuPont’s family.
33. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, pp. 16–17.
34. Letter from John L.Newcomb to Frederick P.Keppel, President, Carnegie Foundation,
November 19, 1935. RG 2/1/2.491 II, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
35. Telegram from Frederick Keppel to John Newcomb, November 22, 1935, RG 2/1/2.491 II,
37. Letter to John Luck from John Newcomb, March 7, 1936, RG 2/1/2.49 II, Box 13, Special
Collections, University of Virginia.
Notes • 223
38. John J.Luck, Temporary Chairman, to the Committee on Academic Legislation, “Report of
the Committee on Honors Courses to the President of the University,” n.d. [1936]. RG 2/1/
2.491 II. Box 13, 1934–36 Honors Courses—Reports of the Committee. Special Collections,
University of Virginia. Comment 3, which was added to the existing comments 1 and 2,
read: “The Dean of the College should not authorize any School to offer honors work
unless the teaching load of such School shall have been sufficiently diminished to permit
of adequate tutorial guidance.”
39. As will also be seen in Chapter 6, this distinction was regarded as absolutely critical to
later defenders of the upperclassman honors tutorial program.
40. The Committee on Honors Courses was replaced by the Committee on Special Programs in
the 1960s which, by the late 1990s, no longer maintained any oversight function of the
honors program.
41. Anonymous written statement submitted to Dean George O.Ferguson concerning degrees
with honors, author unknown, undated [1936], pp. 1–2. RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 13, Special
42. Typewritten statement submitted to Dean George O. Ferguson concerning degrees with
honors, undated [1936], pp. 1ff.RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 13, Special Collections, University of
Virginia.
43. Typewritten statement by Allan T.Gwathmey, no date [1936]. RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 13,
Special Collections, University of Virginia. Gwathmey’s objection to an honors student
graduating with any particular honors would be raised again by other faculty members in
the 1960s and 70s.
44. In spite of this provision for possible coursework, in practice the advice of the Committee on
Honors Courses seems to have been to exempt honors students from course requirements. Indeed,
by 1960, students in the Honors Program were “forbidden to take courses for credit.” Memo to
the Committee on Academic Legislation and the Committee on Academic Policy from David
C.Yalden-Thomson, Chairman, Committee on Honors Courses, February, 1960. Accession No.
5547-d, “Gooch” box, Folder 1958–62. Special Collections, University of Virginia.
45. Typewritten manuscript from the “President’s Committee on Honors Courses in the
University of Virginia,” pp. 1–2. RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 13, Special Collections, University
of Virginia.
46. It is interesting to note that, of the seventeen departments that eventually offered honors
work, these two departments were the first, in the fall of 1936 and the spring of 1937,
respectively, to submit departmental honors program outlines for faculty consideration.
Moreover, by 2000, they were the sole departments that continued to offer honors programs.
47. Handwritten note from R.K.Gooch, October 8, 1936, RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 13, Special
48. Candidates for Final Honors Programme of Studies in Political Science, by R.K.Gooch,
October 1936, RG 2/1/2.491 II, Box 13, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
49. Ibid.
50. Memo from David C.Yalden-Thomson, Chairman, Committee on Honors Courses, to the
Committee on Academic Legislation and the Committee on Academic Policy, February
1960, p. 1. 5547-d, Box: “Gooch,” Special Collections, University of Virginia.
51. Memo from Ivey F.Lewis to President Colgate Darden, n.d. [1950], RG 2/1/2.562, Box 15,
Special Collections, Alderman Library.
52. Letter from John Newcomb to Robert Gooch, February 20, 1937, RG 2/1/2.491 III, Box 7,
53. In spite of this official name change, the monikers “Committee on Honors Courses,”
“Committee on Degrees with Honors” and the abbreviated, “Committee on Honors” were
all used interchangeably at Virginia from this time on.
54. Letter from Robert Gooch to the Academic Schools, April 28, 1937, RG 2/1/2.491 III, Box
7, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
55. Program for Degrees with Honors in Philosophy, by W.S.Weedon, L.M.Hammond, and
others, 1937. (Courtesy of Norman Cohen Coliver, Esq. and Chauncey L.Olinger, Jr.)
56. Ibid.
57. By the 1960s, the honors program enrolled between 32 and 87 students per year and awarded
between 7 and 38 degrees with honors per year. (“The College Honors Program at the
224 • Notes
University of Virginia, 1968,” Francis R.Hart, Chairman, Committee on Special Programs,

May 1968. Courtesy of Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr. and Professor John Marshall.)
58. “1939 University of Virginia Graduating Exercises” Program, June 12, 1939, p. 12. (Courtesy
of Norman Cohen Coliver, Esq. and Professor John Marshall.)
59. Memo to the Committee on Academic Legislation and the Committee on Academic Policy
from David C.Yalden-Thomson, Chairman, Committee on Honors Courses, February, 1960.
Accession No. 5547-d, “Gooch” box, Folder 1958–62. Special Collections, University of
Virginia. In the memo Yalden-Thomson wrote that:
The present program of Honors work in the College was started on the initiative
of President Newcomb in the 1930s. President Newcomb considered that, under
the program for the regular B.A. degree, not enough was being done for the more
gifted student. The committee which studied this matter, under the Chairmanship
of Professor R.K.Gooch, recommended a new program of study leading to the
B.A. degree with Honors. These recommendations were accepted with slight
change by the Committee on Academic Legislation, were approved by the faculty
of the College without a dissenting vote and were endorsed by President Newcomb.
Thus was instituted the Honors Program presently administered by the Committee
on Honors Courses. At the time of its inception no other state university in America
offered any such program. (p. 1.)
This archival evidence does say “state university,” so it is unclear if there were similar programs
at private institutions. Although it cannot be disproved, there is no evidence or mention in the
documentation that such a purely “Oxbridge” program existed elsewhere. Chauncey Olinger,
a 1955 graduate of the UVa philosophy honors program, along with John Marshall and George
Thomas, both chairmen emeriti of the honors program in philosophy at Virginia, all believe
the current honors program in philosophy to be the sole tutorial honors program of its kind in
the United States. Regardless of its possibly continuing unique status, the tutorial honors
program at Virginia was, according to this archival documentation and personal interviews,
the first in American public higher education.
60. See Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, p. 468.
61. Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, p. 270. Gooch also stated that: “[Newcomb] probably
would have [had] a much better time and much more time to think about various academic
policies and so on if he hadn’t been so much restricted by this terrific disadvantage of being
President during the Depression and during the war.” (Robert Gooch, transcript of interview
with Robert Light, Charlottesville, VA., March 15, 1973. RG 26/13, Folder: Gooch, Robert
Kent, p. 1ff. Virginia Oral History Project, Special Collections, University of Virginia.)
62. Ibid., p. 170.
Chapter 4
1. Letter from Mortimer Adler to Scott Buchanan, [1935], Buchanan Files, Houghton Library,
Harvard University, as quoted in J.Winfree Smith, A Search for the Liberal College: The
Beginning of the St. John’s Program (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1983), p. 19.
2. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Mortimer Adler, [1935], Buchanan Files, Houghton Library,
Harvard University, as quoted in Smith, A Search for the Liberal College, p. 19.
3. Ibid.
4. Letter from Adler to Buchanan, [1935], as quoted in J.Winfree Smith, A Search for the
Liberal College, p. 19.
5. Ibid. In regard to Adler’s comments, “Arthur” is Arthur Rubin, whom Adler had met when
he was an undergraduate and Rubin a doctoral student in the Psychology Department at
Columbia. (A bon vivant, Rubin introduced Adler “to vintage wine accompanied by sliced
apples, ripe cheese, and dry crackers.”) Mortimer Adler, Philosopher at Large: An
Intellectual Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 53–54.
6. Letter from Buchanan to Adler, [1935 or 1936], as quoted in Smith, A Search for the Liberal
College, p. 19.
7. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, July 13, 1975, p. 4. Stringfellow
Barr Papers, Special Collections, Greenfield Library, St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD.
8. Letter from Buchanan to Adler, [1935 or 1936], as quoted in Smith, A Search for the Liberal
College, p. 19.
Notes • 225
9. Mary Ann Dzuback, Robert M.Hutchins: Portrait of an Educator (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1991), p. 127.
10. Stringfellow Barr, “The St. John ’s Program,” n.d. [1938], p.1. Stringfellow Barr Papers,
Special Collections, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
11. Board of Trustees Minutes, University of Chicago, 26:31, March 12, 1936, Special
Collections, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
12. McNeill notes that, “An associate of Adler and McKeon at Columbia, Rubin was a man
whose thrust after a single, saving truth made Adler seem almost like a middle-of-the-road
moderate.” William H.McNeill, Hutchins’ University: A Memoir of the University of
Chicago, 1929–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 70.
13. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Douglas Tanner, Kingston, N.J., September
14. Letter from Mortimer Adler to Scott Buchanan, February 29, 1936, Mortimer Adler Papers,
Box 27, Folder 5, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
15. Amy Apfel Kass, Radical Conservatives for Liberal Education (Unpublished Ph.D. Diss.,
Johns Hopkins University, 1973), p. 142.
16. Kass, Radical Conservatives, p. 144. For additional information on the Committee on the
Liberal Arts, see: Dzuback, Robert M.Hutchins, pp. 127–128; Kass, Radical Conservatives,
pp. 142–152; McNeill, Hutchins’ University, pp. 70–71; and Smith, Search for the Liberal
College, pp. 19–21.
17. Memorandum from Robert Hutchins to E.T.Filbey, dated August 24, 1936, Robert M.
Hutchins Papers, 51/2, Special Collections, University of Chicago. Hutchins continued:
“The committee should work continuously at the University on the problem it was created
to study. Their efforts will be greatly facilitated and they will seem to the faculty to be
much better established if they have adequate quarters.”
18. Dzuback, Robert M.Hutchins, p. 127.
Lippincott Co., 1962), p. 27. (page citation is to the reprint edition).
Barbara: The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1969), pp. 86–87.
22. Wofford, Embers of The World, pp. 86–87. Of the decision to leave Virginia for Chicago,
Barr recounted that:
Finally, I decided that I didn’t want to go. I remember a conversation—Mortimer
Adler was there. Scott and he twisted my wrist for about two hours, and finally
Mortimer said, “I’ve got a question. You say you’re interested in history and want
to teach history and you don’t want to go to the University of Chicago and don’t
feel philosophically fitted for the task that we want to undertake, and we are
philosophers and you aren’t. Just answer one question and I’ll let you alone.” It
was more than one question—Scott had some too—but it came to this: “Which do
you care most about, history or truth?” I knew what he meant, and said, “The
truth, of course.” And then I said, “Oh, go to hell! I’ll come, I guess. But I’m only
going on a year’s leave.” This disgusted Scott, and he said, “Now don’t put your
foot in the water that way. You’re not going to find out what the water’s like
unless you dive.” And I said, “Well, I’m not going to find out what the water’s
like then, because I’m going to put my foot in.”
On another occasion Barr stated that: “I went to Chicago expecting to stay there at least for
three years, probably, although I accepted only for a year ….” In making the move, Barr’s
salary increased from $4500 to $6000. When he later accepted the presidency of St. John’s
his salary was increased to $7500. (Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey Olinger,
1972, p. 54. Courtesy of Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr.).
23. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Mortimer Adler, February 26, 1936, Mortimer Adler Papers,
25. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Mortimer Adler, March 15, 1936, Mortimer Adler Papers,
226 • Notes
26. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Mortimer Adler, March 13, 1936, Mortimer Adler Papers,
27. Letter from Barr to Adler, March 15, 1936.
28. Letter from Mortimer Adler to Scott Buchanan, February 29, 1936, Mortimer Adler Papers,
29. Letter from Buchanan to Adler, March 13, 1936.
30. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Mortimer Adler, February 26, 1936, Mortimer Adler Papers,
Box 27, Folder 5, Special Collections, University of Chicago. This letter contains a full
description of the five students considered by Barr and Buchanan.
31. Ibid.
32. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Mortimer Adler, March 6, 1936, Mortimer Adler Papers,
33. Letter from Buchanan to Adler, March 13, 1936.
34. Letter from Barr to Adler, March 15, 1936.
35. Letter from Mortimer Adler to Stringfellow Barr, March 12, 1936, Mortimer Adler Papers,
36. Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, August 3, 1975, p. 44. Stringfellow Barr
Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
37. Initially Hutchins had tried to appoint Adler to the Philosophy Department by presidential
proclamation. When the department refused the appointment, Hutchins, with the approval
of the Dean of the Law School, appointed Adler to the Law School faculty as a professor of
philosophy of law. With this appointment, Adler taught, not only in the Law School, but
also in the college. Many of the college faculty regarded this maneuver as Hutchins’ attempt
to circumvent the faculty’s usual role in decisions regarding appointments and it made the
faculty suspicious of Hutchins. See William McNeill, Hutchins’ University: A Memoir of
the University of Chicago, 1929–1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
38. Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, August 3,1975, p. 46.
39. Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, July 13, 1975, p. 6. The syllabus for
Barr’s historiography class, History 201, notes four required readings. The first three were
the main works by Herodotus, Bede, and Gibbon. In addition to being required “to exhibit
a reasonable familiarity with the factual content” of these readings, students were expected
to criticize, “the methods of these three historians in the light of Introduction to the Study
of History,” by Ch.V.Langlois and Ch.Seignobos, trans. by G.G.Berry (New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 1898), which according to Barr, was “perhaps the best known manual
on modern historical methodology.” “Syllabus for History 201, University of Chicago, Fall
Quarter, 1936” Stringfellow Barr Papers, Section 2, Box 30, Folder 18, Special Collections,
St. John’s College.
40. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Robert Hutchins, May 25, 1936, Mortimer Adler Papers,
41. The Cavalier, September 1936, Stringfellow Barr Papers, Section 2, Box 4, Folder 23, p. 8.
Special Collections, St. John’s College.
42. Ibid.
43. Hutchins, “Report of the President, 1935–36” (unpublished, University of Chicago, 1937),
pp. 21–22, as quoted in Harry S.Ashmore, Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard
Hutchins (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1989), p. 137.
44. Scott Buchanan, “A Crisis in Liberal Education” (Annapolis: Capital-Gazette Press, n.d.
[1938]; reprinted from the Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly, February 1938, Vol. XXVII, No.
2, pp. 106–118), p. 13. Robert M.Hutchins Papers Addenda, Box 19, Folder 2, Special
Collections, University of Chicago.
45. Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey Olinger, 1972, pp. 42–43.
46. Committee on the Liberal Arts, “Minutes. October 3, 1936” p. 1. Mortimer Adler Papers
57, UC1, Special Collections, University of Chicago. Other members, who apparently never
played much, if any, role in the committee meetings are listed in Kass, Radical
Conservatives, p. 143ff and in Adler, Philosopher at Large, p. 174.
47. “The Work of the Inner Committee,” Mortimer J.Adler Papers, Box 57, Folder: “Virginia
Plan,” Special Collections, University of Chicago.
48. See Kass, Radical Conservatives, pp. 146–151, for a detailed account of the members’
competing philosophies.
Notes • 227
49. Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey Olinger, 1972, p. 38.

50. Ibid, p. 33.
51. Ibid.,p.38.
54. Buchanan, “A Crisis in Liberal Education,” p. 13.
55. Barr, The St. John’s Program.
59. McNeill, Hutchins’ University, p. 71
60. F.Champion Ward, ed., The Idea and. Practice of General Education: An Account of the
College of the University of Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950; reprint,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 58. (page citation is to the reprint edition).
Frodin’s “major revision” was the 1929 “New Plan” noted in Chapter 1.
61. Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, July 13, 1975, p. 7.
62. Barr, handwritten draft of article for The Center Magazine, p. 14,8053h, Box 4, Stringfellow
Barr Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
63. Barr once remarked that Rubin didn’t do the reading, so he wasn’t really part of their group.
65. Barr, draft for The Center Magazine, p. 16.
66. Ibid., p.15. On a separate occasion Barr noted that: “Aristotle annoys me. I think he’s got a
sharp mind but he annoys me by—there’s a certain aridity about him, after [reading] Plato.
You feel like saying, ‘Oh come on, did you ever smell a flower? Life is better than you are
painting it.’ But Plato seems to me just terrific.” (Barr, transcript of interview with Charles
and Mary Wiseman, July 6, 1975, p. 56.)
67. Ibid.
68. Catesby Taliaferro and Charles Wallis, unpublished papers. President’s Papers, 1925–1945,
69. Essays from Scott Buchanan to Robert Hutchins, n.d. [1936], Number I, p. 1. Stringfellow
Barr Papers, Section 2, Box 30, Folder 13, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
70. Ibid.,p.2.
71. Ibid., p. 8.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid., p. 9.
74. Essays from Scott Buchanan to Robert Hutchins, n.d. [1936], Number II, p. 1. Stringfellow
75. Ibid., p. 5.
76. Ibid., p. 6. Buchanan elaborated that this criterion, “works on contemporary books as well
as on ancient books, although the great contemporary book may not turn out to be great
when it is as old as the ancient books are. This kind of criterion gets rid of a lot of nonsense,
although it hardly gives us an easy rule to apply to books published before there were lists
of best sellers, and it doesn’t take account of historical accidents such as the burning of the
library at Alexandria. But it serves to stop us from trying to achieve impossible angelic or
divine perfection and precision in our judgments.”
77. Ibid. As elaboration: “This is also shocking, particularly to those who rest their case for the
liberal arts on logic and want completely ambiguous reading, writing, and arithmetic…. A
really ambiguous book has no reading or interpretation at all; it is nonsense. On the other
hand, a book with many interpretations has multi-dimensional-univocality; it may say many
things, or the same thing in many ways, in each case gaining in artistic and intellectual
power and precision. I am thinking not only of Plato, Dante, and Aesop, but also of those
books that achieve great generality and therefore can be understood on all lower levels.
This last point is particularly obvious in mathematical classics.”
78. Ibid., p. 7. Buchanan added: “This again has a paradoxical tone about it. This does not
mean that a great book merely asks questions students or professors cannot answer; many
bad books try to do that. A great book answers so many questions that on the basis of those
answers, questions are asked that couldn’t be asked without them. I mean that, but I also
mean that great books are often about matters that are really unanswerable, in short the
228 • Notes
ultimate in thought and being. Furthermore, I should say that great books always touch
these matters in more or less direct ways; they exercise the intuitive reason and the
contemporary imagination.”
79. Ibid. Finally: “As a work of fine art it must be a microcosm mirroring all the other books
and as many things as man knows or can know. This is the hardest criterion to apply, but in
relation to the others above is obvious enough to understand.”
80. Ibid., pp. 12–13.
81. lbid., p. 14.
82. Essays from Scott Buchanan to Robert Hutchins, n.d. [1936], Number III, p. 2. Stringfellow
83. Ibid., p. 3.
84. Ibid., p. 12.
85. Ibid., pp. 12–13.
86. Essays from Scott Buchanan to Robert Hutchins, n.d. [1936], Number I, p. 10.
87. “Report To The President On The Committee On The Liberal Arts,” March 29, 1937,
President’s Papers, 1925–1945, Box 51, Folder 2, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
89. Ibid., p. 10.
90. Ibid., p. 16.
91. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to his mother, Ida Barr, February 21, 1937, RG 2/1/2.491 III,
Box 2, Folder: 1937–38 “B” President’s Office, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
93. Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, August 3, 1975, p. 44.
94. Board of Trustees Minutes, University of Chicago, 27:39, March 11, 1937, Special
95. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to John Newcomb, April 3, 1937, Stringfellow Barr Papers,
Section 2, Box 29, Folder 56, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
96. Handwritten note from Ida Barr to John Newcomb,April 15, 1937, RG 2/1/2.491 III,Box2,
Folder: 1937–38 “B” President’s Office, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
97. Letter from John Newcomb to Ida Barr, April 17, 1937, RG 2/1/2.491 III, Box 2, Folder:
1937–38 “B” President’s Office, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
98. To say St. John’s is the nation’s third oldest college, as Barr did, is debatable, although
perhaps more an issue of semantics than substance. Following Harvard College and the
College of William and Mary in succession, St. John’s had been established as King
William’s School in 1696. It did not receive its collegiate charter, and the name St. John’s
College, however, until 1784.
100. Barr later recorded that these decisions had been highly stressful for him to make. When
first presented with the idea of putting their ideas into practice at St. John’s, Barr said, “I
was alarmed. I had recently brought myself to resign from the Virginia faculty and, because
I had strong ties with the institution and warm friendships there, I developed such a bout of
psychosomatic colitis that I was hospitalized. Nevertheless, it ended by our going.” (Barr,
draft for The Center Magazine, p. 16.)
101. Barr, “The St. John’s Program,” p. 4. Regarding the College’s debt, Barr wrote:
From time to time the Board had asked itself questions concerning the proper
function of a liberal arts college. But the most tangible answer they had received
had landed them in the most trouble. In the booming ’twenties, the antiquity of
the College and the colonial authenticity of Annapolis led to a confused effort to
bring to life again the urbanity and poise of eighteenth-century civilization. Mr.
Rockefeller was just then restoring Williamsburg, and the late Mr. Francis Garvin
suggested similar glories for St. John’s and for Annapolis. The College became
the focus of a colonial restoration. October, 1929, fatefully intervened and left the
College loaded with colonial property and with a debt under which it was still
reeling in 1937.
102. Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., 1972, p. 63.
103. See Smith, A Search for The Liberal College, for a more extensive discussion of this period,
p. 21ff.
Notes • 229
105. Smith, A Search for the Liberal College, p. 21.

106. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, August 3, 1975, p. 48.
107. Scott Buchanan, as quoted in Smith, A Search for the Liberal College, p. 22.
108. Buchanan, “A Crisis in Liberal Education,” p. 13. Robert M.Hutchins Papers Addenda,
Box 19, Folder 2, Special Collections, University of Chicago. Because of Barr and
Buchanan’s departure, on July 5, 1937, Hutchins named Arthur Rubin the acting chairman
of the Committee on the Liberal Arts. (President’s Papers, 1925–1945, Box 51, Folder 2,
Special Collections, University of Chicago). By the end of the year, the Committee was
dissolved “because of changes in the work and location of the personnel, [and] a foundation
[The Liberal Arts Foundation] has been organized for the promotion of the work in the
liberal arts which will continue the work on a different basis at Chicago and elsewhere….”
(Board of Trustees Minutes, University of Chicago, 27:280, December 9, 1937, Special
Collections, University of Chicago.) The Liberal Arts Foundation, which supplied
philanthropic support from Mrs. Marion R.Stern and Mrs. David M.Levy to Chicago, and
anonymously to St. John’s, was officially dissolved on October 17, 1942. (Robert M.Hutchins
Papers Addenda, Box 85, Folder 1, Special Collections, University of Chicago).
109. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffman, August 3, 1975, p. 48.
110. McNeill, Hutchins’ University, p. 71.
111. Years later Barr recalled that the two men had dickered over who should hold the
administrative positions:
Buchanan said that I would have to be president. I scoffed at the idea and reminded
him that the curriculum we had dreamed of was his baby, not mine. But, he
answered, he couldn’t be president: he didn’t answer his mail. I retorted that this
was because he believed a lot of it was not worth answering. He agreed but pointed
out that his correspondents thought it was, so I would have to be president. I
groaned and told him that he would have to be dean. He loudly objected, but I
declined to budge.
(Barr, draft for The Center Magazine, p. 16. Barr resigned from Chicago effective June 30,
1937, Buchanan effective December 31, 1937. (Board of Trustees Minutes, University of
Chicago, 27:170, July 8, 1937; 28:8, January 13, 1938, Special Collections, University of
Chicago).
113. Letter from R.Catesby Taliaferro to Mortimer Adler, July 5, 1937, Mortimer J.Adler Papers,
Box 57, Folder: “St. John’s Founding.” Special Collections, University of Chicago.
114. Letter from Mortimer Adler to Catesby Taliaferro, July 21, 1937, Mortimer J.Adler Papers,
Box 57, Folder: “St. John’s Founding.” Special Collections, University of Chicago.
115. Letter from John Newcomb to “Winkie” Barr, June 24, 1937, RG 2/1/2.491 III, Box 2,
Folder: 1937–38 “B” President’s Office, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
116. Handwritten letter from Ida Barr to John Newcomb, dated Tuesday [June 1937], RG 2/1/
2.491 III, Box 2, Folder: 1937–38 “B” President’s Office, Special Collections, University
of Virginia.
117. Letter from John Newcomb to Ida Barr, June 26, 1937, RG 2/1/2.491 III, Box 2, Folder:
1937–38 “B” President’s Office. Special Collections, University of Virginia.
118. Mortimer J.Adler, A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror: Further Autobiographical
Reflections of a Philosopher at Large (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992), p. 37.
120. Buchanan, “A Crisis in Liberal Education” p. 13.
121. Barr, “The St. John’s Program” p. 5.
122. Ibid.,p.4.
123. Stringfellow Barr, Obituary of Scott Buchanan in The American Oxonian, October 1968,
pp. 276–280. Stringfellow Barr Papers, Accession no. 8053h, Box 4, Special Collections,
University of Virginia. Barr wrote in 1939 that the ultimate goal of a St. John’s education
was the following:
The student ought by graduation to have achieved a disciplined mind, and such an
achievement implied a quickened imagination, the power to reason clearly, the
capacity to apply theory in practice. In addition to being able to read, write, and
reckon more skillfully and fruitfully than the American college graduate of today
commonly does, in addition to being able and willing to face real prob lems, he
230 • Notes
should be able to recognize those eternal problems which his ancestors faced
before him and which recur for every generation of human beings. Experience
had taught that the best statements of those problems are the “classics” of human
thought. And since the student, whether he likes it or no, will have to do his
thinking and feeling in the great European tradition to which he was born, his best
chance of discovering himself lay in claiming his natural heritage—the wisdom
of that tradition. For that wisdom he would have to turn, not to the college textbooks
which discussed it at second hand, but to the classics, the “great books,” both of
ancient and modern times. There in the company of great minds he would learn to
deal with great problems. (Barr, “The St. John’s Program,” p. 12.)
124. Barr, “The St. John’s Program,” p. 10.
125. Barr, transcript of interview with Charles and Mary Wiseman, July 6, 1975, p. 65. Of the
Don Rag at Oxford Barr recollected: “…they’d get you and drill the hell out of you. And
they were ruthless. It was worse than being rude because if they were rude you could stand
the abrasive SOBs. I don’t care what you say. They were very courteous on top but obviously
gunning for you and I found that it had a hell of an effect on the student body. You’re on a
pretty hot spot if you’ve been there for some months and then you walk around without
knowing what it’s all about” (p. 154).
To the suggestion that Oxford played an “important role” in the conception of the “New
Program” at St. John’s, Barr replied:
It certainly did in my case…. My impression is that it played a less[er] role in
Scott’s case…. For instance, I remember urging the Don Rag. I think Scott put it
in because I seemed to think it important and he had no proof that it wasn’t, he
just didn’t particularly think it was. But I think he put it in because he thought
maybe I was right. He could try it. There wouldn’t be any harm. And I think later
was damn glad he did. (Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with David Rea
and Allan Hoffman, November 22, 1975, p. 154. Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special
Collections, St. John’s College.)
At the suggestion of Barr’s wife, whose father had been an Oxford don, the Oxford tradition
of a “high table” in the dining hall was also implemented at St. John’s. (Stringfellow Barr,
transcript of interview with David Rea and Allan Hoffman, November 22, 1975, p. 154.)
126. Adler, A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror, p. 65.
128. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Francis Mason, June 29, 1975, p. 57.
Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
129. Barr, as quoted in Smith, A Search for the Liberal College, p. 45.
130. Smith, A Search for the Liberal College, p. 45. Robert Hutchins pulled the Chicago Maroons
football team, the “Monsters of the Midway,” out of the Big 10 in 1939, too. (See Ronald J.
Kim, Life on the Quads: A Centennial View of the Student Experience at the University of
Chicago [Chicago: University of Chicago Library, 1992], p. 60ff). In 1951 Robert Gooch
and others served on a committee at Virginia that recommended elimination of all athletic
scholarships at the University and proposed abandoning intercollegiate football. The
committee’s recommendations were not enacted. (See Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University,
p. 318ff.)
131. Stringfellow Barr, The Ends and Means of General Education, reprinted from the Proceedings
of the Fifty-third Annual Convention of the Middle States Association of Colleges and
Secondary Schools, 1939, p. 10. Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special Collections, University
of Virginia.
132. Walter Lippman, “The St. John’s Program,” reprinted from “Today and Tomorrow,” New
York Herald Tribune, December 27, 1938. Alexander Meiklejohn Papers, Box 57, Folder 4,
Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Madison, WI.
133. Mark Van Doren, Liberal Education. (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1943), p. 153.
134. John Andrews Rice, “Fundamentalism and the Higher Learning,” Harper’s, May 1937, p.
266. Quoted by William Buchanan, “Educational Rebels in the Nineteen Thirties,” Journal
of General Education, 37, No. 1, 1985, pp. 3–33.
135. Stringfellow Barr, Obituary of Scott Buchanan in The American Oxonian, October 1968, p.
278.
Notes • 231
136. Charles E.Clark, “The Higher Learning in a Democracy,” The International Journal of
Ethics, Vol. XLVII, No. 3, (April 1937), pp. 322–323. Mortimer J.Adler Papers, Box 77,
Special Collections, University of Chicago.
137. Harry Gideonse, a critic of Hutchins at Chicago at the time that The Higher Learning in
America was published in 1936, wrote that Hutchins had produced: “volumes in support of
the thesis that there should be a unifying philosophy, [but] without specific indication of
the type of unity or of philosophy….” (Harry D.Gideonse, The Higher Learning in a
Democracy: A Reply to President Hutchins’ Critique of the American University [New
York: Farrer & Rhinehart, 1947], p. 3., as quoted in Bruce Kimball, Orators & Philosophers:
A History of the Idea of Liberal Education, expanded edition [New York: The College
Board, 1995], p. 279.) Winfree Smith, a more sympathetic chronicler, likewise observed
that in The Higher Learning, “No specific metaphysics is advocated.” (Smith, A Search for
the Liberal College, p. 23).
138. Clark, “The Higher Learning in a Democracy,” p. 323.
139. Ibid.
140. John Pilley, ‘The Liberal Arts and Progressive Education,” The Social Frontier, Vol V., No.
44, April, 1939, p. 212. Mortimer J.Adler Papers, Box 77, Special Collections, University
of Chicago.
141. Ibid.,p.216.
142. Photo caption accompanying article by Sidney Hook, “Ballyhoo at St. John’s College—
Education in Retreat,” The New Leader, May 27, 1944, p. 8. Mortimer J.Adler Papers, Box
77, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
143. Francis P.Donnelly, “The Curriculum Controversy,” The Commonweal, August 26, 1938,
p. 441. Mortimer J.Adler Papers, Box 77, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
144. John Dewey, “Challenge to Liberal Thought,” Fortune, August 1944. Mortimer J.Adler
Papers, Box 77, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
145. Ibid.
146. Alexander Meiklejohn, “A Reply to John Dewey,” Pamphlet, reprint from Fortune, January
1945. Mortimer J.Adler Papers, Box 77, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
147. Ibid.
148. Ibid. In subsequent letters to the Editors of Fortune in March 1945, Dewey claimed that Meiklejohn
misconceived his meaning while Meiklejohn claimed Dewey had misconceived his.
149. Sidney Hook, “Ballyhoo at St. John’s College—Education in Retreat,” The New Leader, May
27, 1944, pp. 8–9. Mortimer J.Adler Papers, Box 77, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
150. Ibid.
151. Ibid.
152. Ibid.
153. Stringfellow Barr, The Ends and Means of General Education, p. 7.
154. Ibid., p. 11.
155. Barr, The St.]ohn’s Program.
156. Barr, The Ends and Means of General Education, p. 11.
157. Ibid.
158. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Emily Hamblen, April 27, 1940, as quoted in Smith, A
Search for the Liberal College, p. 58.
160. Letter to “Winkie” Barr from Garrard Glenn, “Spring Hill,” Ivy Depot, VA, August 12,
1937. Stringfellow Barr Papers T1404, St. John’s College 2/72/9, Box 20, Folder:
Correspondence G-Gl, Maryland State Archives, Annapolis, MD.
161. John Dewey, Letter to the Editors, Fortune, March 1945. Mortimer J.Adler Papers, Box 77,
Special Collections, University of Chicago.
162. Alexander Meiklejohn, Letter to the Editors, Fortune, March 1945. Mortimer J.Adler Papers,
Box 77, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
163. Robert Hutchins, “Memorandum on Education,” November 13, 1941, p. 5. President’s
Papers, 1940–1963, Box 22, Folder 5, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
164. Letter from Robert Hutchins to Barr, Buchanan, and Adler, September 8,1944, p. 2. Robert
M.Hutchins Papers Addenda, Box 11, Folder 20, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
232 • Notes
Chapter 5
American Colleges and Universities (New York: Harper & Bros., 1944), p. 69, n. 1.
2. Ibid. p. 92.
Since 1636 (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977), pp. 230–231.
4. Ibid., p. 14.
5. Ibid., p. 7.
6. Ibid., p. 15.
7. Frank Aydelotte, “Honors Programs at Swarthmore” (Columbia University Press, Five
College Plans, 1931) in Readings for Liberal Education, ed. Louis Locke, William Gibson,
George Arms (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1948, 1952), pp. 45–52.
8. In 1944 Aydelotte noted that the University of Virginia employed outside examiners for the
final honors examinations. However, David Yalden-Thomson, the chairman of the Virginia
Committee on Honors Courses, held that outside examiners were first used at Virginia at
the conclusion of the 1958–59 academic year. (Memo to the Committee on Academic
Legislation and the Committee on Academic Policy from David C.Yalden-Thomson,
Chairman, Committee on Honors Courses, February 1960, p. 4, n. 1. (Accession no. 5547d,
Robert Gooch Papers, Folder 1958–62. Special Collections, Alderman Library, University
of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.)
9. Aydelotte, “Honors Programs at Swarthmore,” pp. 45–52.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Yalden-Thomson, to the Committee on Academic Legislation and the Committee on
Academic Policy, February 1960, p. 2.
13. Ibid., p. 6.
14. Aydelotte, Breaking the Academic Lockstep, pp. 91 -93.
15. Ernest L.Boyer and Arthur S.Levine, A Quest for Common Learning: The Aims of General
Education (Princeton: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1981),
pp. 13–15.
1994), pp. 249–251.
17. A semantic note. Historian Christopher Lucas wrote that:
Interestingly, in the 1940s and 1950s, some writers attempted to introduce a sharp
distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘general’ education, the suggestion being that
the former consisted of a fixed body of traditional liberal-arts disciplines, and the
latter any course of study exhibiting breadth or diversity. This usage was decidedly
at odds with earlier practice in the 1920s and 1930s, when the two terms were
used interchangeably and almost synonymously. As always, writers harbored great
expectations about what liberal-general education might accomplish, but were
forever in disagreement over structure and substance (Lucas, American Higher
Education, p. 252).
18. [President John L.Newcomb] “The Liberal Arts and Sciences Curriculum,” n.d. [1946],
RG 2/1/2.551, Box 8, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
19. Ibid.
20. “Report of the Special Committee on Curriculum,” in a memorandum from the Office of
the Dean of the College, December 29, 1944, RG 20/59 (3710), Box 11, Special Collections,
21. “Report of the Post-War College Committee,” August 21,1944, RG 2/1/2.562, Box 9, Special
Collections, University of Virginia, p. 5.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. The revised 1935 curriculum is presented in Chapter 2, note 61.
25. “Summary of the Report of the Committee on Academic Legislation,” and “Summary of
the Report of the Balz Committee,” n.d., RG 20/59 (3710), Box 11, Special Collections,
Notes • 233
26. The new college curriculum established in 1945 was as follows:

Required Courses:
English 1–2 Composition, 6 Semester Hours.
English 3–4 Literature, 6 Semester Hours.
Foreign Language, no hours listed. (A second year course in each of two foreign languages or
a third year course in one.)
Mathematics 1–2, Mathematical Analysis, 6 Semester Hours.
Natural Science: Biology 1–2 or Chemistry 1–2 or Geology 1–2 or Physics 1–2,
10–12 Semester Hours.
Social Sciences: History 17–18, 6 Semester Hours.
Physical Education: P.E. 1 and four semesters of activity courses.
To these 40 to 60 hours of required courses were added 18 to 30 required hours in the major
subject and not less than 12 semester hours in related subjects for a total of 30 to 42 hours in
the Major Subject. Free electives were to complete a total of 120 semester hours for the B.A.
degree. Additionally, one had to pass a final comprehensive examination. (“The Bulletin of
the Liberal Arts Committee,” Vol. I, No. I, April 15, 1947. RG 19/2/6.781 Folder: “Bulletin of
the Liberal Arts Committee, 4/15/47–9/18/50.” Special Collections, University of Virginia.)
27. “Report of the Curriculum Committee on Requirements,” n.d. [1946] RG 2/1/2.551 I, Box
28. “Suggested Reorganization of the College Curriculum, University of Virginia, ‘Committee
of Ten,’” n.d. [1946] RG 20/59 (3710) Box 11, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. “Report of the President of the University of Virginia to the Board of Visitors, July 1,1946
to June 30, 1947,” RG 2/1/2.551 II, Box 11, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
32. D.Clark Hyde, “The Liberal Arts Committee: Objectives and Means,” n.d. [1947], RG 20/
59 (3710), Box 11, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
33. “The Bulletin of the Liberal Arts Committee,” Vol. I, No. 1., April 15, 1947.
34. “The Bulletin of the Liberal Arts Committee” Vol. IV, No. 5., September 18, 1950, RG 19/
2/6.781, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
35. Ibid.
36. Comprehensive accounts of St. John’s episode with the Navy can be found in J.Winfree
Smith, A Search for the Liberal College: The Beginning of the St. John’s Program (Annapolis,
MD: St. John’s College Press, 1983), pp. 67–89, and in Richard Miller, As If Learning
Mattered: Reforming Higher Education (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 102–
121.
37. Years later Barr recounted the initial meeting that he and Buchanan had with Mellon in
Barr’s office at St. John’s: “Paul asked whether we needed any help, and the context of the
remark made me think, not that he wanted to teach, but that he had certain influence and
might be able to help work out the program, which interested him, clearly. My answer
made it clear to him that his delicate way of saying he had rocks had missed me. I of course
knew he had rocks but I didn’t know he was talking about it, and [Mellon] was so embarrassed
and said, ‘No, I mean, could I be of any help financially?’ And Scott and I burst into
raucous laughter, because we did not know where the salaries were coming from on the
first of the month, and it was about a week off. I told him so, so he said, ‘Well, anytime you
need money like that,… we’ll fix it up.’ From then on, Paul was constantly back of me”
(Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Douglas Tanner, Kingston, N.J., September
38. Paul Mellon, Reflections in a Silver Spoon: A Memoir (New York: William Morrow and
Co., 1992), pp. 177–178.
39. Letter from Paul Mellon to Stringfellow Barr, April 16,1946. Alexander Meiklejohn Papers,
Box 57, Folder 4, Wisconsin Historical Society Archives.
40. Smith, A Search for the Liberal College, 79.
42. Ibid., pp. 67–68.
234 • Notes
43. Letter from Robert Hutchins to Alexander Meiklejohn, October 1, 1946, Meiklejohn Papers,
Box 17, Folder 11.
44. “New College To Be Founded in Berkshires,” The Berkshire Evening Eagle, Pittsfield,
MA, December 9,1946. Meiklejohn Papers, Box 57, Folder 4.
45. Letter from Secretary James Forrestal to Thomas Parran, chairman of the St. John’s Board,
June 8,1946, as quoted in Smith, A Search for the Liberal College, p. 80.
69.
47. Stringfellow Barr, Obituary of Scott Buchanan in the American Oxonian, October 1968, p. 279.
Stringfellow Barr Papers, Accession No. 8053h, Box 4, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
Hutchins’ and Adler’s refusal to leave Chicago had happened before. It will be recalled that
Hutchins refused to give up the presidency of Chicago for the presidency of St. John’s in 1937,
cven though the “New Program” at St. John’s was closer to his own educational philosophy than
what was being done at Chicago under the “New Plan” instituted in 1931. Adler also declined to
move to Annapolis. Hutchins and Adler then refused to leave Chicago for the Stockbridge venture
in 1946. In November 1948 Buchanan, in a letter remarkably similar in message to the one Adler
had sent him at Virginia in 1936, wrote to Hutchins: “God I’d like to pull you away from Chicago:
I’d still like to. You ought to be putting yourself to public service; you’d be an un-prededented (sic)
solution to an unparalleled occasion. Chicago is never going to do anything but glitter with
possibilities which get realized elsewhere, and you are its Cassandra. Break the curse and get out
before Helen launches a thousand ships.” Hutchins nevertheless remained the president of the
University of Chicago until 1951 when he became an associate director of the Ford Foundation.
(Letter from Scott Buchanan to Robert Hutchins, November 20, 1948, Robert M.Hutchins Papers
Addenda, Box 19, Folder 2, Special Collections, University of Chicago.)
48. McKeon sent a letter to Buchanan after McKeon’s visit to Annapolis to discuss the Stock-bridge
venture. McKeon said: “I am inclined more and more, since the visit in Annapolis, to the conclusion
that if you are out of the project [at St. John’s], the project as we have been talking about it for
some twenty years is not feasible, and I shall not get into the new version of it [in Massachusetts]
either. I am losing faith in the dialectical process: it may give another fellow a good subject matter
for dialogue, but it seems to be designed for a hemlock ending.” (Richard McKeon to Scott
Buchanan, February 9, 1946, as quoted in Miller, As If Education Mattered, p. 115).
49. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Alexander Meiklejohn, May 3, 1947, Meiklejohn Papers,
Box 3, Folder 1.
50. Letter from Scott Buchanan to St. John’s President John Kieffer, June 8, 1948, as quoted in
Smith, A Search for the Liberal College, p. 86; and, statement from John S.Kieffer, president
of St. John’s College, December 19, 1946, Robert M.Hutchins Papers Addenda, Box 85,
Folder 2, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
51. Buchanan, “The Dean’s Nine-Year Report,” 1946, St. John’s College, Meiklejohn Papers,
Box 57, Folder 4.
52. Mellon, Reflections in a Silver Spoon, p. 358.
53. Ibid., p. 427.
Box 6, Folder 1.
55. Memorandum from Dean Ivey Lewis to President Colgate Darden, n.d. [1950], RG 2/1/
2.562, Box 15, Special Collections, University of Virginia. Lewis wrote, “Our educational
program in the liberal arts is somewhat like guiding a boy through a forest by teaching him
the name of each kind of tree and not acquainting him with the forest itself.”
56. Letter from Allan Gwathmey to Dean Ivey Lewis, October 23, 1946, RG 19/3/4.541, Special
57. Ibid. Gwathmey also stated that, among those who should not be chosen was “anyone such
as an assistant Dean from Yale, Harvard or Princeton, who has written a new book, and who
has no appreciation of the background of the university or its unique opportunities for the
future.”
Box 6, Folder 1.
59. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Alexander Meiklejohn, July 7, 1947, Meiklejohn Papers,
Barr Correspondence.
Notes • 235
60. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate Darden, May 29, 1947, RG 2/1/2.551 II, Box 11,
Barr Correspondence. Barr also noted “I do not think, be it said to [Darden’s] credit, that
he was endowment-hunting.”
62. Ibid.
63. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Alexander Meiklejohn, June 3, 1947, Meiklejohn Papers,
Box 6, Folder 1.
65. Ibid.
Box 6, Folder 1.
68. Stringfellow Barr, Memorandum to Non Resident Liberal Arts, Incorporated Board Members,
July 29, 1947. Meiklejohn Papers, “Barr Correspondence.”
70. Letter from Stringfellow Barr, Chairman, to Non-Resident Board Members of Liberal Arts
Incorporated, July 23, 1947, Robert M. Hutchins Papers Addenda, Box 85, Folder 2, Special
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid.
73. Barr, Memorandum to Non-Resident Liberal Arts, Inc. Board Members, July 29, 1947.
74. Ibid.
75. Stringfellow Barr, Memorandum to Non-Resident Liberal Arts, Inc. Board Members, August
7, 1947. Meiklejohn Papers, “Barr Correspondence.”
76. The location of these two pieces of property is unclear, but it is possible that the larger
piece was the Birdwood estate while the smaller “contiguous” property was the old golf
course land on which now stand the McCormick Road dormitories, built between 1946 and
1951, and Ruffner Hall, built in the early 1970s.
77. Barr, Memorandum to Non-Resident Liberal Arts, Incorporated Board Members, August 7, 1947.
78. Ibid.
79. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate Darden, August 10, 1947, RG 2/1/2.551 II, Box
80. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Ernest Feidler, Secretary, Old Dominion Foundation, August
5, 1947 (Meiklejohn Papers, “Barr Correspondence”); and letter from Barr to Non-Resident
Board Members of Liberal Arts, Incorporated, August 7, 1947.
82. Statement issued by Liberal Arts, Incorporated, August 18, 1947, Robert M.Hutchins Papers
Addenda, Box 85, Folder 2, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
83. Ibid.
84. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate Darden, August 10, 1947, Special Collections,
85. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate Darden, August 18, 1947, RG 2/1/2.551 II, Box
86. Grant letter from Stringfellow Barr to the Greenwood Foundation, August 28, 1947, R.M.
Hutchins Papers Addenda, Box 11, Folder 20, Special Collections, University of Chicago.
In the letter Barr asked for an expedited decision on his funding request since,
“Confidentially, the president of the University of Virginia wishes me to rejoin the faculty
of that institution …to develop there the type of education I inaugurated at St. John’s.”
87. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Robert Hutchins, August 30, 1947, R.M.Hutchins Papers
88. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Marshall Field, August 30, 1947, Robert M.Hutchins Papers
89. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate Darden, January 3, 1948, RG 2/1/2.552, Box 2,
236 • Notes
90. Ibid.
91. Letter from Colgate Darden to Stringfellow Barr, January 20, 1948, RG 2/1/2.552, Box 2,
92. Letter from Colgate Draden to Stringfellow Barr, June 29, 1948, RG 2/1/2.552, Box 2,
93. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate Darden, July 7, 1948, RG 2/1/2.552, Box 2, Special
94. Letter from Colgate Darden to Stringfellow Barr, July 13, 1948, RG 2/1/2.552, Box 2,
Special Collections, University of Virginia. Darden stated that one of his problems regarding
the world government movement was that “I have never been able to see how the necessary
machinery can be devised.” Also, “in this [world government] venture far more than civic
courage is required.” (Letter from Colgate Darden to Stringfellow Barr, May 24, 1948, RG
2/1/2.552, Box 2, Special Collections, University of Virginia.)
95. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate Darden, February 2, 1948, RG 2/1/2.552, Box 2,
Special Collections, University of Virginia. Darden related to Barr that “I am afraid that I
am not as much of a United World Federalist as you are, although I am interested in the
movement because I share your views as to the danger of war, and I am in absolute accord
with you as to what would remain to victor and vanquished alike, once the shooting starts.”
(Letter from Colgate Darden to Stringfellow Barr, February 3, 1948, RG 2/1/2.552, Box 2,
Special Collections, University of Virginia.)
96. Harry S.Ashmore, Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins (Boston:
Little, Brown, and Co., 1989), p. 276.
97. Letter from Barr to Darden, July 7, 1948.
98. Handwritten note to Robert Hutchins from Stringfellow Barr, July 9, 1948, Robert M.
Hutchins Paper Adenda, Box 11, Folder 20, Special Collections, University of Chicago;
and, Barr, Obituary of Scott Buchanan in The American Oxonian, October 1968, p. 279.
99. Barr, Obituary of Scott Buchanan in The American Oxonian, October 1968, p. 279. Other
“liberal artists” were involved in Barr’s foundation effort. Buchanan was an advisor to the
foundation and Hutchins served on the board of trustees.
100. Colgate Darden, “Report of the President of the University of Virginia to the Board of
Visitors: July 1, 1948-June 30, 1949,” RG 2/1/2.561, Box 2, Special Collections, University
of Virginia.
101. Ibid.
102. Colgate Darden, “Report of the President of the University of Virginia to the Board of
Visitors: July 1, 1949-July 1, 1950,” RG 2/1/2.561, Box 2, Special Collections, University
of Virginia.
103. Ibid.
104. Memorandum from Lewis to Darden, n.d. [1950].
105. N.B.Lewis was wrong about Plan A being for four years. It was only for the first two—the
underclass years.
106. Memorandum from Lewis to Darden, n.d. [1950].
107. Letter from Colgate Darden to Stringfellow Barr, April 13, 1950, RG 2/1/2.562, Box 4,
108. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate Darden, April 24, 1950, RG 2/1/2.562, Box 4,
109. Letter from Colgate Darden to Stringfellow Barr, November 1, 1950, RG 2/1/2.562, Box 4,
110. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate Darden, November 8, 1950, RG 2/1/2.562, Box 4,
111. “Memorandum to the President of the University of Virginia from Stringfellow Barr,” n.d.
[November 1950], RG 2/1/2.562, Box 4, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
112. Ibid.
113. Ibid.
114. Ibid.
115. Note from Colgate Darden to Ivey Lewis, November 25, 1950, RG 2/1/2.562, Box 10,
116. Note from Ivey Lewis to Colgate Darden, n.d. [November 1950], RG 2/1/2.562, Box 4,
Notes • 237
Chapter 6
1. Letter from Scott Buchanan to Stringfellow Barr, December 18, 1951. Stringfellow Barr
Papers, Section 2, Box 7, Folder 10, Special Collections, Greenfield Library, St. John’s
College, Annapolis, MD.
2. University of Virginia Record, 1952–1953, p. 146, Alderman Library, University of Virginia,
3. Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., untitled essay in Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of His
Life and Work, ed. Charles A.Nelson (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1997), pp. 208–212.
4. University of Virginia Record, 1953–1954, p. 148.
5. Author’s interview with Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr., Investment broker and Columbia University
oral historian, August 28,1999, Riverdale, New York.
6. Stringfellow Barr, “The University and the Honor System,” An Address to Entering Students,
Cabell Hall, University of Virginia, September 22, 1952, Stringfellow Barr Papers, Section
2, Box 2, Folder 19, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
7. Author’s interview with Staige D.Blackford, Editor, Virginia Quarterly Review, University
of Virginia, June 7, 1999, Charlottesville, VA.
8. Author’s interview with Samuel A. “Pete” Anderson, II, Architect for the University,
University of Virginia, May 12,1999, Charlottesville, VA.
9. Olinger, untitled essay in Stringfellow Barr, pp. 208–212.
10. Author’s telephone interview with Chauncey Olinger, June 7, 1999, New York, NY.
11. Author’s interview with John Marshall, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia,
June 9,1999, Charlottesville, VA.
13. Author’s interview with Arthur F.Stocker, Classics Professor Emeritus, University of
Virginia, June 3, 1999, Charlottesville, VA.
43, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Author’s interview with Charles A.Nelson, Editor and Visitor Emeritus, St. John’s College,
August 28,1999, Croton-on-Hudson, NY.
18. “Great Books Given to Library by Mellon,” The Cavalier Daily, May16, 1952, Stringfellow
19. Interview with Chauncey G.Olinger Jr., August 28, 1999, Riverdale, NY. According to
copies of the University of Virginia budget, Barr’s salary of $7,500 came from “University
Funds,” not “State Funds” like the other professors in the Political Science Department.
This suggests that Barr’s salary came from private sources, most likely Mellon. (University
of Virginia Budget, 1951–52, p. 75., 1952–1953, p. 77., 1953–54, p. 78.)
20. Paul Mellon, Reflections in a Silver Spoon: A Memoir (New York: William Morrow & Co.,
1992), p. 407.
21. Archival note, 8053, Box 9, “Engagements Accepted,” Stringfellow Barr Papers, Special
Collections, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
22. Olinger, untitled essay in Stringfellow Barr, pp. 208–212. Olinger recalled: “I remember
someone asking Barr in class if he belonged to any ‘Communist-front’ organizations and if
so which, and Barr, without hesitation, replied, ‘Oh, all of them.’ Such cavalier remarks
did little to help his standing on campus or to advance the educational program he was
there to promote.” Virginia was a conservative university during Barr’s tenure. The Lower
Division Non-Academic Activity Log for March 1952 notes that: “A resident complained
that…the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship held a ‘group discussion’ in the lounge of Emmett
House that…was pro-communistic and seditious in character.” (RG 20/61, Special
Collections, University of Virginia).
23. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffmann, August 24, 1975, pp. 48–49.
46, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
25. Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Frederick Schuman, October 14, 1954. Stringfellow Barr
Papers, Special Collections, St. John’s College.
26. Barr, transcript of interview with Charles and Mary Wiseman, July 6, 1975, p. 48.
238 • Notes
27. Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffmann, August 24, 1975, p. 48.
28. Ibid, p. 49.
29. Author’s interview with Charles E.Moran, University Historian Emeritus, University of
Virginia, June 3, 1999, Charlottesville, VA. As noted in Chapter 1, starting in the late 1970s
Moran was the first person to serve as the University Historian at Virginia.
30. Author’s interview with Raymond C.Bice, Professor of Psychology Emeritus and University
Historian, University of Virginia, May 10,1999, Charlottesville, VA.
31. Author’s interview with Samuel A. “Pete” Anderson, May 12,1999.
32. Stringfellow Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey Olinger, 1972, p. 17. Courtesy of
Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr.
33. Barr, transcript of interview with Allan Hoffmann, August 24, 1975, p. 49.
34. Barr, transcript of interview with Charles and Mary Wiseman, July 6, 1975, p. 48.
35. James Collier Marshall to Mrs. [Gladys] “Oak” Barr, November 19, 1957, Stringfellow
Barr Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
36. Petition to the Department of Political Science, the Faculty Senate, and the Administration
of the University of Virginia, Spring 1953, courtesy of Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr. Olinger
recollected that: “I went to Barr and proposed that I circulate a petition among the students
in his class urging the University to arrange for him to continue teaching. Winkie told me
that there was no chance that he could stay on, but, he said, what I could do if I wanted to,
was to circulate a petition calling for the continuance of the course. He thought that that
might have a better chance of succeeding, especially if it was not tied to himself.” Olinger,
untitled essay in Stringfellow Barr, pp. 208–212.
37. Petition to the Department of Political Science, the Faculty Senate, and the Administration
of the University of Virginia, Spring 1953. Courtesy of Chauncey G.Olinger, Jr.
38. Letter from Robert Gooch to Chauncey Olinger, May 5, 1953. Courtesy of Chauncey G.
Olinger, Jr.
39. Letter to the faculty from the Committee on Honors Courses, n.d., [February 1952], RG 2/
1/2.591, Box 16, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid.
42. “Specimen Plan of a Two Years Course of Study Leading to the Bachelor of Arts with
General Honors,” n.d. [February 1952], RG 2/1/2.591, Box 16, Special Collections,
43. Ibid.
44. Letter from Archibald B.Shepperson to the Committee on the Honors Degree, February 5,
1952, RG 2/1/2.591, Box 16, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
45. Ibid.
46. Letter from Fredson Bowers to the Committee on Degrees with Honors, February 7, 1952,
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Letter from Messrs. Botts, Floyd, McShane, Mallett, Tuttle, Yalden-Thomson, and Younger
to Robert Gooch, Chairman, Committee on the Degrees with Honors, February 17, 1952.
50. There were five members of the Lower Division Committee: Lewis Hammond, professor
of philosophy and Assistant Dean of the Summer Session, was the Chairman; Marcus Mallett,
assistant professor of philosophy and Acting Dean of the College, served as Associate
Dean of the Lower Division; Raymond Bice, assistant professor of psychology, served as
chairman of the Resident Advisors; George Spicer, professor of political science, and Richard
Fletcher, Associate Director of Admissions, served as ex-officio members. (“Darden Appoints
Policies Group,” The Cavalier Daily, May 4, 1950).
51. Letter from Marcus Mallett to the Academic Faculty, May 23, 1951, RG 20/61 (7986), Box
52. Loose announcement flyer, n.d. [1951], RG 20/61, Special Collections, University of
Virginia. The flyer noted that Barr, a “nationally known educator and visiting professor of
Political Science…is an unusually well qualified speaker and also a very interesting one,
students should make plans to hear him speak.”
53. Minutes, Committee on the Lower Division, University of Virginia, March 23, 1953, RG
20/61 (7986), Box 1, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
Notes • 239
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Letter from David Wright to the Members of the Academic Faculty, May 26, 1953, RG 20/
61 (7986), Box 1, Special Collections, University of Virginia. It will be recalled that in
1948 Darden had wanted Barr to teach this course. Darden wrote:
Sometime ago the faculty authorized the giving of a course under the title “The
Development of American Political Thought and Institutions.” The announcement
states that the great ideas which have influenced American development are
stressed. The course is offered under the joint auspices of the Schools of History,
Economics, and Political Science. The course was not given this past year due to
the inability of getting the required help. It is this assignment that I should like to
see you undertake. I think you will have no difficulty in making arrangements
with the respective Schools for the work which you want to do. That the course is
offered under the auspices of three schools would tend to give you, in my opinion,
great freedom of action. (Letter from Colgate Darden to Stringfellow Barr, June
29, 1948, RG 2/1/2.552, Box 2, Special Collections, University of Virginia.)
Barr had declined and responded that he believed this proposal to be “a less good beginning
than the beginning you and I had planned [earlier].” (Letter from Stringfellow Barr to Colgate
Darden, July 7, 1948, RG 2/1/2.552, Box 2, Special Collections, University of Virginia.)
58. Letter from Wright to the Members of the Academic Faculty, May 26, 1953.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid.
61. Letter from Shepperson to the Committee on the Honors Degree, February 5, 1952.
62. University of Virginia Record, 1956–1957, p. 119. The Catalog entry also stated that: “The
Lower Division Seminars are non-departmental in character, and hence may not be offered
as part of a field of concentration. The Seminars are administered by the Committee on
Lower Division Seminars which consists of all members of the instructional staff.”
63. Author’s interview with George B.Thomas, Professor of Philosophy, University of Virginia,
June 18, 1999, Charlottesville, VA.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid.
66. “Report on Meeting with First-Year Men of Top Academic Standing,” n.d., RG 20/61 (7986),
67. Author’s interview with Raymond Bice, May 10,1999.
68. Robert K.Gooch, “The Meaning of a Liberal Arts Education,” n.d., 5547d, Robert Gooch
Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
69. “The Liberal Arts Seminars at the University of Virginia,” n.d. [1960–61], RG 21/60.821,
70. Ibid. The reading schedule for Liberal Arts Seminar 4 also included Shakespeare’s King
Lear and The Tempest. These were apparently inadvertently left off the above list.
71. “Liberal Arts Seminar 2, 1957–1958, Writing Assignment 3 (Lucretius, Books III-VI),”
1958, RG 21/60.821, Box: Gooch Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
72. “Liberal Arts Seminar 2, 1957–1958, Writing Assignment 7 (Lavoisier),” 1958, RG 21/
60.821, Box: Gooch Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
73. “Liberal Arts Seminar 2, (Einstein),” 1957, RG 21/60.821, Box: Gooch Papers, Special
74. “Liberal Arts Seminar 2, 1957–1958, Writing Assignment 11 (Harvey),” 1958, RG 21/
60.821, Box: Gooch Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
75. Invitation, n.d. [1960–61], RG 21/60.821, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
76. Author’s interview with Arthur Stocker, June 3, 1999.
78. University of Virginia Record, 1960–1961, pp. 128–129.
79. Author’s interview with George Thomas, June 18,1999.
1994), pp. 262–263.
81. See Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963,
1995).
240 • Notes
82. Virginius Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University: A History (Charlottesville, University of

Virginia Press, 1981), p.451.
83. Author’s interview with John Marshall, June 9,1999.
84. Ibid.
85. Letter from William Duren to the Committee on Honors Courses, May 16, 1958, 5547d,
Robert Gooch Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia. The two-year gap between
Duren’s letter and Yalden-Thomson’s response is explained by Duren’s absence from the
University during the interim.
86. Aydelotte had argued the same point in 1944:
…The common American organization of courses and examinations has kept the
tutorial system from producing results commensurate with the expectations formed
or the expense involved. Tutorial work has usually been an extra, supplementing
the course and hour system, but not replacing it. For this reason neither students
nor tutors have taken it seriously enough to produce the best results. The success
of the student in securing a degree and in winning honors has in most colleges and
universities depended upon his marks in his courses. He could neglect them only
at his peril, while if he did his course work well he could neglect his tutor with
impunity. In those few places where the success of the student depends entirely
upon comprehensive examinations for which he prepares under the guidance of
his tutor, the tutorial system has flourished; elsewhere it has been more or less
halfhearted. (Frank Aydelotte, Breaking the Academic Lockstep: The Devlopment
of Honors Work in American Colleges and Universities. [New York: Harper &
Bros., 1944], p. 114).
87. Memo from D.C.Yalden-Thomson, Chairman, Committee on Honors Courses, to the
Committee on Academic Legislation and the Committee on Academic Policy, February
1960. 5547d, Robert Gooch Papers, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
88. For a more complete discussion of the Echols Scholars Program see Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s
University, pp. 425–426.
89. William Duren, “Echols Scholars,” May 18, 1960, 5547d, Robert Gooch Papers, Special
90. Dabney, Mr. Jefferson’s University, pp. 425–426.
91. Francis R.Hart, “The College Honors Program at the University of Virginia, 1968,” May
1968. (Courtesy of David Yalden-Thomson and George Thomas, via John Marshall).
92. Although examiners had come from almost fifty different colleges and universities, they
had come most often from the University of North Carolina and Princeton, followed by
Washington and Lee, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Columbia.
93. Hart, “The College Honors Program at the University of Virginia, 1968,” May 1968.
94. Pattie Sellers, “Pragmatism Endangers Honors Program,” Cavalier Daily, February 26,
1981.
95. Author’s interview with Arthur Stocker, June 3, 1999.
96. Hart, “The College Honors Program at the University of Virginia, 1968,” May 1968.
97. Author’s interview with John Marshall, June 9,1999.
98. Ibid.
99. Author’s interview with George Thomas, June 18,1999.
100. Sellers, “Pragmatism Endangers Honors Program,” Cavalier Daily, feburary 26,1981.
101. Ibid.
102. An account of these celebrations can be found in Bill Sublette, “Free to Think: Honors
Tutorials Allow Independent Learning,” University of Virginia Alumni News, January/
February 1989, Vol. LXXVII, No. 3, pp. 25–27.
Conclusion
1. “Stringfellow Barr: A Rebel’s View of the Young Revolutionaries,” College and University
Business 43, No. 6 (December 1967), p. 56. After leaving the University of Virginia in
1953, Barr became Professor of Humanities for ten years at Rutgers University. Then, from
1966 to 1969, he was a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in
Santa Barbara which was under the leadership of Robert Hutchins. There he also rejoined
Scott Buchanan vvho, after work for the Foundation for World Government and the
Progressive Party, had become a Fellow at the Center in 1957. Buchanan died in Santa
Notes • 241
Barbara in 1968, after which Barr retired with his wife, Gladys, to Kingston, N.J. He died
in Virginia in 1982. See Charles A.Nelson, ed. Scott Buchanan: A Centennial Appreciation
of His Life and Work (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1995) and Stringfellow Barr: A
Centennial Appreciation of His Life and Work (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1997).
2. Lawrence Levine, The Opening of the American Mind: Canons, Culture, and History (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1996), p. 41.
3. John Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition: A History of American
Colleges and Universities, 4th ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1997), p. 283.
4. Ibid.,p.269.
5. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p.
344.
7. Bruce Kimball, Orators & Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education (New
York: The College Board, 1995), p. 191.
American Colleges and Universities (New York: Harper & Bros., 1944), p. 91.
9. Kass did note that:
There have been many off-shoots and by-products of the movement throughout
the American educational system. The integrated liberal arts programs on such
campuses as Notre Dame in Indiana, Saint Mary’s College in California, Thomas
Aquinas College in California, and St. Anselm’s College in Manchester, New
Hampshire, are a few of the current endeavors that can be traced to this Movement.
A more contemporary by-product of the Movement, however, can be seen in the
large number of courses offered on many university campuses that teach their
subject matters with the aid of the great books. Very few of these developments,
however, have come close to the original aspiration in terms of principles, purpose,
content, or scope. (Amy Apfel Kass, Radical Conservatives for Liberal Education
[Ph.D. Diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1973; Ann Arbor: University Microfilms,
1973] p.307,n.21.)
Though an enduring transformation was not achieved, the courses that were implemented at
Virginia in the 1950s are an integral part of the story of the Virginia Plan and a direct
manifestation of the liberal arts movement.
10. Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York: A.Knopf,
1962; reprint, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990), p. 480. (page citation is to
the reprint edition.)
11. Memorandum from Ivey F.Lewis to Colgate Darden., n.d. [1950], RG 2/1/2.562, Box 15,
Special Collections, Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
12. Letter from Archibald B.Shepperson to the Committee on the Honors Degree, February 5,
1952, RG 2/1/2.591, Box 16, Special Collections, University of Virginia.
13. Letter from Fredson Bowers to the Committee on Degrees with Honors, February 7, 1952,
14. Author’s interview with Arthur F.Stocker, Classics Professor Emeritus, University of
Virginia, June 3, 1999, Charlottesville, VA.
15. Frank Aydelotte, “Honors Programs at Swarthmore” (Columbia University Press, Five
College Plans, 1931) in Readings for Liberal Education, eds. Louis Locke, William Gibson,
George Arms (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1948, 1952), pp. 45–52. Aydelotte continued:
To hold the best back to the standards of the average in the interests of democracy
means to condemn democracy to mediocrity. It has sometimes been argued that
this is the inevitable consequence of the wide extension of the privilege of higher
education. It is my opinion that democracy cannot afford to pay that price. If
democracy meant the necessity of leveling down the best to the mediocre standard
attainable by the average, then democracy would be foredoomed to failure. But
true democracy means not that, but rather the development of every man to the
full extent of his ability in order that the state may be provided with the trained
servants who are indispensable to its success. (p. 52)
17. Barr, transcript of interview with Chauncey Olinger, Kingston, N.J. 1972, pp. 102–103.
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Index
A University of Virginia, 171–77, 183; Scott

Adler, Mortimer, 2, 7, 13, 56, 173; Aquinas Buchanan and, 48–49, 113, 218n. 68, 20n.
and, 35–36; Chicago Committee on the 103; St. John’s College and, 120–34, 148,
Liberal Arts, 108; educational philosophy 149, 165; Stockbridge proposal and, 146–
of, 46–47, 52, 127, 206n. 21, 210n. 59, 48; the Virginia Plan and, 44–49, 54–55,
21n. 12; great books and, 61; influence on 57, 60, 61, 62, 69–100, 110, 218n. 71,
Buchanan, 55, 58–59, 60, 101–102; 220n. 1, 221n. 9; University of Chicago
influence on Hutchins, 35–37, 39; and, 38, 39, 98, 101, 102–107, 108, 225nn.
People’s Institute and, 58, 69; Scott 22; University of Virginia and, 49, 51–52,
Buchanan and, 58–59, 60, 101–102, 122; 54, 56, 118–20, 123, 149–61, 166–69,
St. John’s College and, 123, 124; 236nn. 94. 95, 240n. 1
Stockbridge proposal and, 146–47; Bell, Daniel, 9–10, 29, 30, 31, 32–33, 37, 55
University of Chicago and, 61, 105–106, Benton, A.F., 70
108, 226n. 37, 234n.47 Bice, Raymond, 174, 188, 238n. 50
Albert the Great, 35 Black Mountain College, 127
Alderman, Edwin A., 59, 92, 218n. 71, 219n. Bloom, Allan, 12
86; University of Virginia and, 44, 49, 53, Boole, George, 58
57 Bourdieu, Pierre, 5
antebellum colleges, 18–20, 41–43; Bowers, Fredson, 180–81,200
curriculum of, 18–20; for Blacks, 24; for Boyer, Ernest, 8–11,28, 32, 206n. 24, 209n.
women, 20–21; student life at, 21 43
Aquinas, Thomas, 35, 211n. 82, 220n. 101 Brubacher, John, 9–10, 26, 197, 198
Aristotle, 35–36, 74, 89, 188; philosophies, Buchanan, Scott, 3,7,13,240n. 1; Adler and,
17 55, 58–59, 60, 101–102; Barr and, 48–49,
Ashemore, Harry, 2 70, 218nn. 68; Chicago Committee on the
Aydelotte, Frank: Breaking the Academic Liberal Arts and, 108–110,111–16;
Lockstep, 135–37, 179; honors programs competition with Gooch, 61–67;
and, 4, 55, 93, 138–39, 164–65, 198–200, educational philosophy of, 24, 56, 126,
217n. 65, 232n. 8, 240n. 86; Swarthmore 132, 210n. 59, 213nn. 22; great books
College and, 136–37 scheme of, 61–67, 77, 78, 122, 189, 200,
220n. 103, 222n. 18, 227nn. 76, 228n. 79;
B honors courses at Virginia and, 61–62,
B.A. degree, 18 215n. 43; Hutchins and, 57–58, 111–16;
B.S. degree, 18 Oxbridge tradition and, 125, 219n. 85;
Balz, Albert, 58, 142 professorial style of, 50; St. John’s
Barr, Ida, 120, 123, 175 College and, 121–34, 148, 229n. 111;
Barr, Stringfellow, 3, 7, 13, 213n. 25; Stockbridge proposal and, 146–48; the
Chicago Committee on the Liberal Arts Virginia Plan and, 44–49, 53, 54–55, 57,
and, 108–110,111,118–20; critics of, 60, 61–67, 69–100, 122, 140, 222n. 31;
173–74; educational philosophy of, 51–52, University of Chicago and, 38, 98, 102–
126, 132; Foundation for World 107; University of Virginia and, 56–59, 61,
Government and, 162, 166, 173, 240n. 1; 70, 71, 82, 151–61, 218nn. 68
great books curriculum and, 39, 164–65; Buchler, Justus, 29
influences of, 51–52; Mellon and, 151–55; Burgess, John, 29
professorial style of, 49–51; return to Burton, Ernest DeWitt, 33, 37
247
248 • Index
C civic issues and, 39–40; distribution

Cambridge: tutorial method at, 12, 83, requirements, 27; elective, 21–24, 28, 30,
207n. 37 86, 88, 142; extra-, 28; freedom and
Carnegie Foundation, 92–93 restrictions in, 16; great books, 108;
Chicago Committee on the Liberal Arts (see history of American, 6–7, 16–29;
also University of Chicago), 37–38, innovation in, 20–21; Jeffersonian, 86,
101–105, 107–16, 119, 159; antagonism 201–202, 222n. 18; lack of cohesion in,
toward, 105–106, 109; Barr and, 108–110, 192; liberal arts (see liberal arts
111, 118–20; Buchanan and, 108–110, curriculum); liberal culture and, 27;
111–16; members of, 108–109, 117; universal, 19
problems of, 109–10; proposals of, 108,
121; report of, 117–18; St. John’s College D
and, 122 Dabney, Richard, 48–49, 83
Clark, Charles, 127–28 Dabney, Virginius, 60, 99, 222n. 31
Classics, the: ancient, 63; at St. John’s Dalton, Jack, 184
College, 1; curriculum, 86; liberal arts Darden, Colgate, 144, 236n. 94; a new
and, 75; literary, 74; modern, 55–56, 63; Virginia Plan and, 166–69, 182; Barr and,
scientific, 74; teaching, 55–56, 71–72; 160–61, 162–63, 166–69, 172–74;
Western, 2, 55–56 Unversity of Virginia and, 148–57,
CJemons, Harry, 149 163–64
Cleveland, Richard, 121 declension: fear of, 39–40, 52, 56
College: of Charleston, 44; of William and Denby, David, 2
Mary, 43 Depression, the: education and, 10, 27, 91,
college within a college, 181–84,200 136
colonial colleges, 16–18, 29, 41–43; Dewey, John, 27, 129–31, 133, 199
curriculum of, 17; in loco parentis and, Dobie, Armistead, 45
17–18 Donnelly, Francis, 129
Columbia University: Colloquium, 69, 107, DuBois, W.E.B., 24–25
124; Contemporary Civilization course at, Duren, William, 192, 194, 240n. 85
30–31; core curriculum at, 2, 29, 72, 141; Dzuback, Mary Ann, 2, 103
general education movement at, 15, 27,
29–31; General Honors courses at, 27, 29– E
31, 38, 45, 61; great books courses at, 2, Echols, William H., 194
30–31, 45, 62; history of, 29–30; liberal Echols Scholars Program, 194–195
arts movement at, 15, 31 education: democratic, 16; elite, 16,41, 83,
Committee to Frame a World Constitution, 184, 187, 194, 201; general (see general
162–63 education); goals of, 16,209n. 51; liberal
core courses: in Western civilization, 5, 8 (see liberal education); of Blacks, 24–25;
curricular reform: history in United States, of women, 20–21, 24–25, 208n. 17;
13, 41, 83; liberal arts movement and, 5, philosophy of, 20,192,199; practical/
8, 23; movements, 10–11, 13, 27, 30, 39, vocational, 18, 24–25, 28, 73; public, 41
100, 139, 145, 177, 198, 209n.43, 216n. elective courses: critics of, 22–23; history of,
61; undergraduate, 5 21–24,26; proprietorship of, 8
curricular reform at the University of electivism: higher education and, 42–43, 85;
Virginia: appeal of, 52–55; committees issue of, 32, 42, 197, 212n. 1; philosophy
for, 140–43; history of, 3, 15, 202, 216n. of, 43
61; liberal arts movement and, 6; Eliot, Charles W., 22–23, 26, 42, 86, 197,
obstacles to, 103, 200; President Darden 208nn. 22
and, 163–66, 172; President Newcomb English education models, 26, 198, 212n. 14
and, 59–61; proposals for, 177–87; Enlightenment, 17
Virginia Plan and (see Virginia Plan) Erskine, John, 45; Columbia University and,
curriculum: classical, 17, 19–20, 22, 85, 88; 30–31, 38; General Honors course, 2,11,
college, 20; core, 5, 8, 23; cultural and 61, 210n. 59
Index • 249
F great books program at University of

Faulkner, W.Harrison, 98 Virginia, 210n. 67; Barr and, 39, 150–51,
Ferguson, G.O., 70 154–56, 157–59, 160–61, 162, 164,
Field, Marshall, 93, 160 167–69, 171–73; Buchanan and, 160; for
Filbey, E.T., 103 underclassmen, 178, 183, 187, 191; Gooch
Forrestal, James V., 146, 158 and, 150–51, 155, 164, 166; Hutchins and,
Foundation for World Government, 162, 166, 155, 161; Mellon and, 153–56, 157–59;
173, 240n. 1 President Darden and, 150–51, 154–57,
Franklin, Benjamin, 19 160–61, 162, 164, 166–68; President
fraternities, 28,126 Newcomb and, 153; upperclassmen and,
Frodin, Reuben, 110 193; Virginia Plan and, 124, 153, 163–66,
192 (see also Virginia Plan)
G great books programs, 5, 6, 8, 12, 37, 202,
general education, 6, 8–10, 26–28; critics of, 210n. 67; Columbia University, 2, 30;
181; definition of, 9; reform, 9, 135–40; definition of, 11–12, 207n. 33; influence
traditional model of, 10 of, 197–98; St. John’s College (see great
general education movements: common books program at St. John’s College);
curriculum and, 39; goals and values of, University of Virginia (see great books
10, 15, 27–28, 206n. 24 program at University of Virginia)
general/liberal education: confusion about, “Greats” honor revival at Oxford, 55–56
9–11, 206n. 24, 232n. 17; liberal arts Greek Revival: college curriculum and, 20
movement and, 10–11, 23, 71 Gwathmey, Allan T., 95–96, 149–50, 223n.
German: higher education ideals, 21,26; 43, 234n.57
research model of education, 30, 198
Glenn, Garrard, 133 H
Gooch Committee (see also Virginia Plan), Harper, William Rainey, 2, 33–34, 37
60, 61–67, 70–100, 101, 111, 165, 178, Harris, Michael, 2
222n. 31; great books scheme and, 84–94, Hart, Francis, 195
107; on Degrees with Honors, 177–84; Harvard University: founding of, 15, 16, 20;
President’s List Authority, 64–66; report General Education in a Free Society, 139;
on honors courses, 64–65, 69–80, 95–98 Red Book, the, 139, 141, 167; Report on
Gooch, Robert, 3, 8, 13, 119, 199; General Education, 167
competition with Buchanan, 61–67, 219n. higher education: African American, 24–25;
91, 220n. 99; honors tutorial scheme and, American, 99; curriculum and, 16–29; fear
61–67, 69, 81, 125, 193, 200, 224n. 59; of declension in, 16; German, 21; great
Liberal Arts Seminars and, 188; books and, 67; history of, 15; liberal arts
professorial style of, 49–50; the Virginia movement and, 4; purpose and goals of,
Plan and, 44–49, 53, 54–55, 60, 61–67, 16–18, 209n. 51; the student and, 16–29
69–100; University of Virginia and, 150– honors: seminars, 2, 27, 136–37; students
51, 166 (see students, honors)
Gottschalk, Louis, 119–20 honors program(s), 4, 8, 85–86, 135, 198;
Great Books Foundation, 38 definitions of, 12–13; general education
great books movement, 38, 47, 199; reform and, 135–40; Swarthmore, 12, 99,
philosophy of, 56, 63–66, 82–83, 113–14; 135–37; tutorials and, 13, 199; University
unity of knowledge and, 65–66 of Virginia (see University of Virginia)
great books program at St. John’s College, honors program(s) at University of Virginia,
10, 98, 124–33, 145, 234n. 47; Barr and 51, 53, 54, 60–61, 62–63, 66, 70, 73–83,
Buchanan and, 145, 159; curriculum of, 2, 85, 93–100, 112, 135, 138–39, 164, 177–
4, 100, 171; traditional liberal arts and, 1; 78, 192–94, 195–96, 198, 200–201, 218n.
Virginia Plan and, 11, 32, 81–82, 84, 157, 71, 223n. 40, 232n. 8
164–65, 202, 221n.9 Hook, Sidney, 131–32, 199
250 • Index
Hutchins, Robert Maynard, 2, 7, 12, 13, 189, 206n. 21, 207n. 3; the classics and,
27–28, 32, 173, 240n. 1; Adler and, 35–37, 75
39; Barr and, 101; Buchanan and, 57–59, liberal arts education: at the university, 5,
102,111–16; Committee on Liberal Arts 56; Blacks and, 25; traditional
and, 37–38, 101–104, 107, 109, 111–18 conceptions of, 3
(see also Chicago Committee on the liberal arts movement, 3, 129, 159, 202;
Liberal Arts); curricular philosophy of, 37, curricular reform and, 5, 8–11, 134;
39; educational philosophy of, 34–35, 37, definition of, 6, 7–8, 205n. 1, 206n. 24;
110, 127–29, 132; St. John’s College and, general education and, 23; goals of, 28;
122, 134; Stockbridge proposal and, 146– great books and, 11,199; higher education
47; University of Chicago and, 33–34, 61, and, 4,6,112,134; influence of, 197–98;
103, 226n. 37, 234n. 47 origins and founders of, 7, 13, 26–27, 54;
Hyman, Sidney, 38 University of Virginia and, 6, 16, 60, 82,
139; Virginia Plan and, 82
I Liberal Arts, Incorporated, 145–59;
in loco parentis: colleges as, 17–18, 21, 23; members of, 146; Stockbridge proposal
decline of, 28–29 and, 146–47, 153; University of Virginia
Inter-University Council on the Superior and, 149, 153–61
Student, 198 liberal culture, 24,26–28; elitism of, 27;
philosophy of, 26; proponents of, 39
J liberal education, 6,8–10,26; confusion
about, 133, 206n. 24; definition of, 9, 74,
Jacksonians, 19
Jefferson’s University of Virginia, 22,41–44, 206n. 24; elitism of, 112–13; importance
53 of, 141; liberal arts movement and, 13;
programs, 1, 71–72; reform, 144, 145;
Jefferson, Thomas, 3, 19; educational
philosophy of, 41–42, 85–86, 98, 128; traditions of, 16, 73–74, 112, 115–16,
Enlightenment philosophy of, 41 129–30
Lippmann, Walter, 1, 4, 126, 145, 198
Jennings, John, 94
Lowell, Abbott Lawrence, 26
Lucas, Christopher, 9,232n. 17
K Luck, J.J., 70, 165
Kass, Amy, 4, 7, 8, 30, 82–83, 199, 220n.
103, 241n.9
Keppel, Frederick, 92–93 M
Kerr, Clark, 192 MacLean, Malcom, 129
Mallett, Marcus, 182–84, 187, 191, 192, 194,
Kessler, Glenn, 196
Kimball, Bruce, 3, 10–11, 16, 198 238n. 50
Malone, Dumas, 49
Marsden, George, 23
L Mayer, Milton, 2
land-grant institutions, 21 McCosh, James, 22–24
Levine, Arthur, 8–11, 28, 32, 206n. 24, 209n. McKeon, Richard, 7, 13, 38, 45–46, 58–59;
43
educational philosophy of, 52, 69, 115;
Levine, Lawrence, 197 Stockbridge proposal and, 147;
Lewis, Ivey F., 141,149,164–66,168, 199 University of Chicago and, 102–103, 109
liberal artists: critics of, 35, 86–87, 116,
McNeill, William, 2, 34, 37, 102, 110
127–32, 199–200; curriculum reform and, Meiklejohn, Alexander: Amherst College and,
7–10; definition of, 7; liberal education 30, 45, 48, 210n. 10n. 59; Experimental
and, 9,12; philosophy of education and,
College at Wisconsin-Madison and, 8;
20, 47, 63 general education reform and, 27, 129–31,
liberal arts: colleges, 19; curriculum, 6; 133–34; liberal arts movement and, 7, 13;
definition of, 6, 7–8, 74, 107, 113; elective
Stockbridge proposal and, 147
system and, 52; history of, 17; liberal arts Mellon, Andrew W., 148
movement and, 13; seven, 47, 86, 107,
Index • 251
Mellon, Paul, 145–46; St. John’s endowment Q

and, 146–48; Stockbridge proposal and, quadrivium: arts of, 7, 115–16, 206n. 24;
146–48, 150; University of Virginia and, curriculum, 59, 69, 75–76, 85, 88, 89;
149, 151–61, 173, 178–79 historical terminology of, 7, 17, 74, 207n.
Middle Ages, 16–17, 28, 129 3; seven liberal arts and, 7, 46–47, 63
Miller, Francis, 121 Quintilian, 11
Miller, Richard, 3, 5–6
Moral philosophy, 17 R
Moran, Charles E., 174 Raven Society, 48
Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, 21 Renaissance, 17
multiversities, 192 research universities, 21
Reuben, Julie, 28, 192, 209n. 51
N Rhodes Scholars, 12, 52, 55, 83
Nelson, Charles, 2, 4, 82 Rice, John Andrews, 127
Newcomb, John: Barr and, 119, 123–24; Rockefeller, John D., 37, 211n. 90
curricular reform and, 59–61, 140, 177; Rogers, William B., 43
funding for Virginia Plan and, 101, 104, Rosenwald, Julius, 102
53; Gooch and, 61; the Virginia Plan and, Rubin, Arthur, 102,110
60, 64, 69–100, 200, 222n. 31; University Rudolph, Frederick: educational philosophy
of Virginia and, 6, 54, 87, 216n. 56, of, 18; great books philosophy and, 5–6;
219nn. 86, 224n. 59; Virginia’s honors history of American education and,
program and, 53, 113, 165 21–22, 27–28, 39, 86–87, 134, 135, 200,
201
O Rudy, Willis, 9–10, 26, 197, 198
Old Dominion Foundation, 145–46, 148; Russell, Bertrand, 35–36, 211n. 82
Stockbridge proposal and, 150; University
of Virginia and, 149, 151–61, 178–79 S
Olinger, Chauncey, 224n. 59, 238n. 36; Barr “separate spheres,” 21, 25
and, 175–76, 184, 237n. 22 Shepard, Donald, 154
organized athletics, 28 Shepherd, Henry, 44
Oxbridge academic tradition, 82, 100, 125, Shepperson, Archibald, 180, 186, 200
199, 217n. 63; colonial colleges and, 16; Smith, J. Winifree: A Search for the Liberal
reforms of, 83, 224n. 59 College, 4, 82, 100, 199, 220n. 101;
Oxbridge tutorial, 55, 207n. 37; American Buchanan and, 50
education and, 3; honors courses and, 55, Socrates, 18
62; St. John’s and, 82; Virginia Plan and, Sophistes, 18
12, 67, 83, 100, 125, 201 Spengler, Oswald, 51–52
Sputnik: educational concerns and, 11, 13,
P 140
paideia, 19, 26 St. John’s College, 228n. 98, 229n. 123,
Parallel and Partial Courses, 18, 20 230n. 125; board of, 121; Buchanan and,
Peirce, C.S., 115 121–34, 145, 159, 233n. 37; critics of,
People’s Institute, 48, 213n. 17; adult 127–32, 134; curriculum of, 2, 27, 122,
seminars at, 69, 107, 124 132–33; great books program at (see great
Petengill, John, 196 books program at St. John’s College); in
Peters, Edward, 35–36 Santa Fe, 148; Mellon endowment for,
Pilley, John, 128–29 146–48, 158–59, 233n. 37; New Program
Plato, 36 at (see great books program at St. John’s
Price, Governor James, 83 College); Stringfellow Barr and, 101, 120–
Princeton University, 19, 22, 135, 141, 201 34, 145, 159, 228nn. 100, 233n.36; student
Protestantism, 16–17 life at, 126; tutorial work at, 82
Puritanism, 16–17, 23, 39 Stern, Marion Rosenwald, 102
252 • Index
Stockbridge proposal, the, 234n. 48; Barr 44,60–62,64,66, 70–100, 121, 137, 165,
and, 147, 149, 152, 155; Darden and, 177–78, 192–93, 223nn. 40, 224n. 59;
148–50, 152, 155; failure of, 148–49, Committee on Special Programs, 195–96,
150–55, 157–58; Liberal Arts, Inc. and, 223n. 40; Committee on the Lower
148–9,153,155; Mellon and, 146, 148–50, Division, 182–86,191; Committee on the
152–53, 155; Old Dominion and, 147–48, Post-War College, 141–42,149; curricular
152; origins of, 146–48; sponsors of, 147 reform at (see curricular reform at the
Stocker, Arthur, 196,200 University of Virginia); Curriculum
Streeter, Robert, 38–39 Committee on Requirements, 142; degree
student(s): counseling, 24; culture, 28–29, requirements of, 142, 163, 181, 214n.27,
126; elite, 83, 184, 187, 194, 201; honors, 215n.45, 223n. 44; departmental honors
62, 66, 90, 95, 99, 136–39, 181, 193, 195, programs at, 181–82; Distinguished
200,223n. 3n. 44; service professionals, Majors Program at, 196; Echols Scholars
28–29 Program, 194–95; electivism at, 42,142,
Summa Theologica, 35–36 163–64, 195; Final Honors Examinations
Swarthmore College (see also Frank at, 195, 215n. 48; Finances, 91; General
Aydelotte): honors programs at, 12,99, Honors program, 178–86, 187, 195, 200;
135–37 General Honors Staff, 178–80, 184;books
courses and (see great books great
T programs at University of Virginia);
Taliaferro, Catesby, 105, 108–109, 111; St. history of, 15, 41; honors programs at (see
John’s College and, 122–23 honors program at University of Virginia);
Thomas, George, 187–88 Jefferson’s curriculum at, 41–42; Liberal
Ticknor, George, 42 Arts Committee, 144; Liberal Arts
traditional liberal arts, 7; undergraduate Department, 191; liberal arts movement
education, 1 and, 6,188; Liberal Arts Seminars, 188–
trivium, 63; arts of, 7, 17, 46, 59, 115–16, 92, 193, 200; Liberal Arts, Inc. and, 149,
206n. 24; curriculum, 75, 85, 88–89; 151–61; Lower Division Seminar
historical terminology of, 47, 74, 207n. 3 program, 182–86, 187–92, 194, 238n. 50,
tutorial method of instruction, 2, 12, 78, 239n. 62; Old Dominion Foundation and,
136–38; English, 12, 138; individual, 139 149, 151–61, 173, 178–79; role in
promoting liberal learning by, 4;
U School of General Studies, 167, 168;
schools within, 43; seminars at, 179, 188;
unity of knowledge, 64,66
University of Chicago: Barr and, 38, 39, 98, Special Committee on Curriculum,
101, 102–107, 108, 225nn. 22; Board of 141–42; the Virginia Plan and (see
Virginia Plan); traditional liberal arts
Trustees of, 102; Buchanan and, 38, 98,
102–107; Committee on the Liberal Arts program at, 1; tutorial programs at, 179,
(see Chicago Committee on the Liberal 188, 192, 194, 200, 224n. 59;
undergraduate program at, 50, 52,
Arts); curriculum of, 2, 33, 37, 72; general
education movement at, 15, 32–39; greats 54, 182, 185, 188; university
books course at, 61,62,81; honors courses seminars at, 192
at, 27; liberal arts movement at, 15; New
Plan of, 37, 103; role in liberal arts V
education, 2 Van Doren, Mark, 7, 13, 31, 45–46, 123; St.
University of Virginia: academic standing of, John’s College and, 123, 126–27;
54; Balz Committee, 142; Classics Stockbridge proposal and, 147
Department at, 196; Committee of Ten, Veysey, Laurence, 6, 23, 209n. 41
143; Committee on Academic Legislation, Vietnam era: third general education reform
84, 94, 97, 184, 224n. 59; Committee on and, 11, 13
College Poicy, 163; Committee on Virginia Plan of 1935 (see also Gooch
Degrees with Honors, 177–80, 182, 193, Committee; great books program at
195; Committee on Honors Courses, University of Virginia): 70–80; Appendix
Index • 253
A of (see Virginia Plan, Appendix A); 73–79; underclassmen and, 84–93,

Appendix B of (see Virginia Plan, 181–92
Appendix B); comprehensive exams of, Virginia Plan, Appendix B, 25–27, 188,
83; contents of, 73–80; crafters of, 43, 221n. 9; Committee on Degrees with
44–49, 60, 87–88; creation of, 52, 69–100; Honors and, 177–79; Gooch and, 3;
debates about, 22; drafting of, 10; elite provisions of, 71, 73, 79–83;
quality of, 83, 112–13, 183, 221n. 12; upperclassmen and, 84, 93–100
faculty self-interest and, 5; failure to vocational training, 24–25, 28, 73
implement, 67, 90–93, 103, 166; financial
constraints of, 90–93, 101, 153, 166; for W
underclassmen, 84–93, 101, 166, 183; for Wallis, Charles, 105, 108–109, 111; St.
upperclassmen, 84, 93–100; general John’s College and, 122–23
education and, 71; Gooch Committee (see Washington, Booker T., 24
Gooch Committee); great books and, 38, West, Andrew Fleming, 26
61–67, 81, 83, 84–93, 110, 122, 145, 202, Wilson, James Southall, 98
220n. 1; history of, 15, 54, 164–66; Wisconsin Idea, the, 24
Honors Degrees of, 79–80, 142; honors Wofford, Harris, 2
students of, 99; honors tutorial work and, Woodberry, George E., 26
12, 61–67, 78, 81–83, 98–99, 137; World War I: first general education
influence of, 197–99; liberal arts movement and, 10, 13, 27, 30, 39, 139,
movement and, 6, 26–27, 107, 197–98, 209n. 43
202, 241n. 10; peak and decline of, 187– World War II: globalist movements after,
96; philosophy of, 11, 142; President’s 162–63; second general education
List Authority, 65–66; program of movement and, 10–11, 100, 139, 145, 177,
instruction for, 75–79; quadrivium 198, 209n. 43, 216n. 61
component of, 74, 75–77, 85, 88,89; Wright, David McCord, 173, 185–86, 200,
reception of, 69–100, 199; reforms of, 29; 239n. 57
revised versions of, 182–96; significance
of, 16; three sections of, 69; trivium Y
component of, 74, 75, 85, 88–89 Yalden-Thompson, David: Committee on
Virginia Plan, Appendix A, 4, 83, 168, 220n.
Degrees with Honors and, 182,192–94,
111, 221n. 9; Barr and, 3, 84, 86; 224n. 59, 232n. 8, 240n. 85; Virginia Plan
Buchanan and, 3, 86, 87; funding for, 94– and, 137–38, 187
95, 98, 101, 165–66; provisions of, 71–7,
Yale Report of 1828, 18–20, 22, 43

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Great Books,

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY GENDER, RACE, AND THE

Haarlow, William Noble.

ISBN 0-203-47171-7 (Adobe eReader format )

The RoutledgeFalmer Studies in the History of Education series includes not

Introduction Virginia, Columbia, Chicago, St.John’s, 1

Chapter 1 Before the Virginia Plan 15

Chapter 2 The University of Virginia and the

Chapter 3 The Virginia Plan and Its Reception at Virginia 69

Chapter 4 Developments at Virginia, Chicago, and St.John’s 101

Chapter 5 Great Plans, Modest Accomplishments 135

Chapter 6 The Virginia Plan at Virginia 171

Conclusion An Unfinished Story 197

The core of this book was originally my dissertation. Additional interviews,

Contemporaneous accounts certainly suggest that such inclusion is

The Liberal Arts and the Liberal Arts Movement

General and Liberal Education

the Harvard president who promoted distribution requirements, described

General/Liberal Education and the Liberal Arts Movement

The Great Books

Essentially the great books philosophy, argued most succinctly by Robert

The Curriculum and the Student in American Higher Education

The Colonial College

The Antebellum College

Women’s Education and Curricular Innovation

introduced parallel courses of study; young ladies chose between a classical

Antebellum Student Life

Rise of the University

in higher education. These changes eventually broadened the appeal of higher

Insights from Black and Women’s Education

advance blacks in American society. DuBois, on the other hand, believed

Reaction, Liberal Culture, and General Education

The Shifting Locus and Decline of In Loco Parentis

They devoted themselves to facilitating social bonds among students. They

Before the Virginia Plan: General Education at Columbia

Before the Virginia Plan: General Education at Chicago

Much of Hutchins’ increasing confidence in the veracity of this path found

Albert’s greatest efforts were directed at assimilating the body of

Although Albert was formative in Aquinas’s development, it took Aquinas, and

These Aristotelian philosophical developments of the High Middle Ages were

Aquinas’s scholastic method of introducing every question with objections

It is unclear, however, whether Adler’s formidable intellect was the genesis

in 1936 with Adler, Barr, Buchanan, and others as members, advocated a

counterparts saw declension in the adoption of Restorationist culture by Boston’s

The University of Virginia

Letting the student choose what courses to take—the elective system—was

What Became of Jefferson’s University

Gooch, Buchanan, and Barr

Much to my surprise, I found that mathematics and poetry run parallel

poetry divided into grammar, rhetoric, and logic; mathematics divided

This conceptualization of knowledge provided these budding “liberal artists”

Three Professorial Styles

Continuing Academic Atrophy

The “Special Honors” System

Barr’s Developing Convictions

The Appeal of Curricular Reform

president, John Lloyd Newcomb, to serve on a committee with Chairman Robert

Propaedeutic Experiences at Oxford

Buchanan and Charlottesville

students per year, one of those statistical monstrosities of computerized

pleased with the visit, particularly with their discussion on “a revaluation of

President Newcomb and Curricular Reform

As noted at the beginning of this chapter, Newcomb believed improvements